One Day in an Ever After
by SapSorrow
Summary: Four years since Sansa took her rightful place as Queen in the North with Sandor Clegane at her side, all the characters who deserve happy endings are living is is one ordinary day in the lives of our favourite characters, a where are they now of Westeros, in which the characters remember how they got to this point. All genres included, many pairings. Bran's a dragon.:-)
1. Sansa

**1.**

**Sansa**

She woke with first light these days, slow and languorous, yawning like a cat as she stretched in the sheets. It was two years into summer and the gold that spilled over the windowsill was molten and warm. _Soft liquid fire, _she thought, though she would find another way to describe it to her husband.

It was not the first morning into which she smiled as she stretched, slowly half sitting up in preparation for the bolder move of actually sitting up. _I'm Queen of all the North _she thought, chastising herself with a smile – _waking up should not be such a slow process. _

She remembered all those years of sleeping for as long as she could, not waking until she knew she would otherwise be called; Kings Landing, The Eyrie, all of her various prisons. She had slept for as long as she could to pass the time more quickly. Dreams had been better than real life back then. She had started to lose hope that it would ever be otherwise.

And here she was. Years of this life had not made her used to it. She had never started to take it for granted, to assume that nothing bad would happen. She knew she should. If she could not trust in herself to keep herself safe she should surely trust in Sandor. When they argued, half the time it was about this – and every time it was over soon with kisses; she never had enjoyed an argument and he, it seemed, was done with shouting at the world.

She turned her head to look at him asleep and dropped a still heavy head down beside his on the pillow. Her fingers lightly traced his face, from nose to the ear nearest her. He had grumbled at her just the other night that she only slept on the side she did because she still could not really stand to look at the other side of his face. She had almost been infuriated; _after all this time _she thought, _after everything I've said and done _but he had not quite meant it and she had not quite become cross.

She would never forget that day towards the end of winter. Winterfell was still under threat and even though they knew that they were winning she had still not fought off the last of The Bastard's men. They had made one last hurried attempt to take back the castle and somehow she had found herself chased into a corner, on her back on the floor with a group of men laughing at her claim to the North and asking how she'd manage it without her skin.

_It's not fair, _she vividly remembered thinking, childish though it was. In that second she had wondered what she had even been trying to do, how indeed she had ever thought that she could do this – _it's not fair, I got so far! _And then a hot spray of blood had hit her in the face and the first man crumpled like the broken toy of a giant. One by one each man who had threatened her was neatly broken and dropped and she had looked up, struggling back to her feet to see who had rescued her. It was the stranger who had come and offered his services as Winterfell's new kennel master. They had had to get new people for everything in the early days of re-establishing their stake on the castle and so she had said yes without much thought. He was a Brother from the Quiet Isle, he said, and at that time she had not been fussy enough to mind that he was so heavily hooded at all times that she never saw his face.

Still that _voice _– and the size of him – something had pulled at the back of her mind. Just a few days before she had gone to speak at him down at the kennels.

"Do I know you, ser?" He had made a noise that was almost a laugh;

"Surely the Queen in the North does not call a kennel master _Ser?" _It had not helped the niggling feeling.

"You remind me of someone," she had frowned.

He had made a half querying grunting sound, never looking at her –

"Some true knight of yours, no doubt."

"No –" she could feel the frown lines running across her forehead – "No knight – but true –" she sighed, remembering – "Truer than anyone I ever met". Her eyes went misty and when she looked back at him he looked quickly away from her, not to show that he had been watching or listening to the faraway dreaminess that had crept into her voice – "But he died," she finished heavily, wondering why it still hurt her heart to say so. She shook her head, shaking off the dream she had never quite been able to fully form anyway – "Good day to you."

She had felt him watching her as she walked away and the feeling that she was missing something had not left her.

And now he stood over her, reaching out his hand and pulling her to her feet and if the deja vu was not enough she heard him rasp softly –

"You're alright now, little bird." Her eyes went wide as she stood up beside him and she stared at him as though she had seen a ghost and it seemed to her she might have done –

"_Sandor?" _she whispered – "That's _impossible."_

"Not impossible little bird," he returned, letting her reach and slip her fingers beneath the hood of his cloak and push it back – "Just –" he did not know what else to say, overwhelmed at hearing her say his name like that, at having her _this _delighted to see him. Her face broke into a smile like a burst of sunlight on the snow and she reached to touch the burned side of his face as if that more than anything convinced her he was real.

And she, unable to stop herself, when she had spent so long holding herself back from everyone and everything had thrown her arms around him as much as they would reach, standing on tiptoe to cover his face with kisses. It had been an easier step than she could have ever imagined between that moment and marriage.

And now, lying in bed beside him, more convinced than she had once imagined she could be that he really would always be the one to keep her safe, she kissed his face again. It made her smile how at this angle he looked undamaged – beautiful even – and she never stopped wanting to trace the lines of him in fascination. Then at some point he would always turn over and she would find the poor scarred side of his face just as beautiful and kiss that twice as much.

When she took a moment to blink between kisses she giggled to see that he was squinting at her from one eye;

"Little bird –" he growled softly, and she thought he was going to say something sweet and affectionate but all that followed was "It's too fucking early to have you pecking at my face."

She kissed him lightly again, quickly, more like a peck than ever.

"The sun's up and it's a beautiful day!" she beamed, all the more cheerfully because she knew it would annoy him. He closed his eyes in pain;

"Stop your bloody chirping already!" She grinned in the comfort of this early morning routine, all the familiar words that meant love and happiness in their language.

"It's a beautiful day and there's a dragon at the window!" she added. He followed where she was looking and swore violently. The dragon had one claw curled around the window ledge, scales glistening black and rainbow in the early morning light. It snaked its head just a little inside when Sansa smiled at it and she could have sworn it was smiling benignly at them.

Sandor swore violently again.

"Oh what's wrong?" she laughed – "It's only Bran."

_x_

**So, my beloved and I were talking last night, coming up with an ending for everyone that was so happy it was almost crack. I didn't sleep for a long time thinking about this and how I could actually work it into a story that was sweet but not ****_complete _****crack. Actually it could be a very long story, even if it does just cover one day. This is the story in which everyone you love is fine, all will be explained and yes, I swear it makes sense that Bran is a dragon!**


	2. Sandor

**2.**

**Sandor**

"Swear to the gods, little bird," he rolled his eyes, sitting up in bed with a heave – "I will never get used to your fucking family".

The dragon that was Bran peered its face further into the room, close enough to be almost nose to nose with him. That was a little too close for comfort and he could feel himself pulling a face as he drew away.

"Honestly Sandor -" Sansa sighed, still smiling benignly – and if he did not know better, which she frequently told him she did not – he could have sworn that the dragon was smiling the same benign smile that she had. He often groaned and sarcastically annoyed her by saying he could see the family resemblance, but at times like this he almost could.

"He won't hurt you," she shook her head, getting out of bed and finding Bran a leg of rabbit as she spoke – "We've told him, _all _of us, no fire, except where needed, and no-one saying the – the -" she lowered her voice, knowing that the little part of Drogon that remained had trouble controlling himself at times – "_The D word," _she whispered.

"All of you my arse," he grumbled, opening his mouth to tell her about Arya yesterday, after one of their frequent spats, yelling "Dracarys! Dracarys!" repeatedly in the dragon's hearing until he could have sworn he actually saw the great black shining creature shake its head at her in tolerant refusal to rise to the bait.

"I'll talk to Arya," _again, _she sighed, patiently.

"Great," he grunted "Good luck with that." She shook her head and turned to her brother;

"Run along now Bran," she smiled, scratching him behind the ear – "It's _still _a little creepy to be nosing into my room like this".

Bran withdrew and a great breeze washed through the room as black wings beat the air outside. Sandor relaxed; much as he respected, indeed even liked most of Sansa's family, he was not sure he would ever get used to having a huge, potentially fire breathing monster flying around the place.

"He used to do this when we were little too," she shook her head, getting back into bed and snuggling in. His arm went around her as though they slotted together that way.

"He used to – be a dragon?"

"He used to _climb. _I'd wake up and find him peering in my window just like that. I never knew how long he'd been balancing there grinning at me. It was weird."

"Weird like having a fucking big dragon flying around the place?"

"Sandor –" she kissed him on the nose – "Shh."

He shushed. He could never, he thought, have imagined his life coming to this – the happiness of waking every day with this girl beside him, of reaching to a point where not only would anybody want to be kissing him on the nose but that he would accept such a thing.

He had learned to accept calm, even peace amongst the Brothers. Cut off from the rage and rumble of the world he had gradually found something akin to contentment. He had never considered himself miserable, had never stopped to care if he was happy or dared imagine he could deserve it. All those years at Casterly Rock and then King's Landing he had not considered himself _unhappy, _he had not considered himself much at all, avoided thinking too hard wherever possible, drowning doubt and bitterness in the acid of wine. He had refused to think of himself as broken, learned to ignore the way people looked at him, learned to react if he had to, with anger and intimidation. He had seen himself turning into someone he hated and convinced himself he was glad of it because it was better than trying to be something that did not exist; trying to be _good. _Whatever that meant.

She had ruined it. He had tried to hate her for it and almost succeeded. Almost; until he realised, with a sinking sensation that was like wildfire in the gut that it was not _hate _after all. He could have pinpointed the exact moment he realised it for good, when he had seen her strength as well as her beauty and known that he was doomed. It had been creeping up on him the whole time she had been staring at her father's head; she wasn't _seeing, _he could see it when none of the rest of them could. He had looked at his own face the same way often enough; walling himself off from it, refusing to be affected. It had taken him by surprise to see her do this too, to be so strong, so stubborn and so young. And then, when Joffrey had threatened her with her brother's head and she had said, barely a whisper – "Maybe he'll bring me yours". That was it, that was the moment, he had known who she was then, heard the ice in her voice and then, as he knelt before her, seen the wolf in her eyes. She was a wolf of Winterfell and he was hers from that moment on.

He had not wanted to change her, only to help, to give fuel to that strength in her he had seen that day. It had frustrated him, every time they awkwardly spoke, to see her hanging on to her ridiculous notions of honour and truth, still living a story in spite of everything she saw, everything she said. Instead he had found himself questioning his own disillusionment, his bitter insistence that the stories were all lies. Her insistence and the way he looked at him – the fear was bad but the pity was worse – and then she had tried to treat him like a rescuing knight in one of her stories and he had not known what to do. He couldn't tell her he would only ever have done it for her, not because it was harsh but because she might have worked a few things out – and not the things he wanted her knowing. So he had been vile to her instead, put a sword at her throat and laughed about her father's death. He had cursed himself the rest of the day about that.

In the end he did not think he had managed to change her at all. Instead she had changed him, almost back into someone who still believed there was anything of honour and bravery left in the world. Of course he had run from her before ever hearing if she would go with him or not.

When he had got word that she had moved to take back Winterfell and the north he had debated with himself for days. It seemed wrong to just leave the Brothers who had done so much for him; it was terrifying to think of re-joining the world, more so to think of seeing her again. He felt he had come so far, learned to embrace a stillness he never though he would have; it had washed him out and made him better and he knew it. It seemed that the most awful thing he could do was to throw that away.

"Do you have to?" the Elder Brother had asked him when he expressed these thoughts aloud, another thing he had learned to do here.

"What?"

"Throw it away? Is peace such a poor thing it should be dependent on this place?"

"Perhaps for me –"

"And this girl – you speak of her. I hear you out there, in the hallways, quietly singing under your breath, it's the song she sang to you, yes?"

He had not been able to meet the man's eyes. It was. Of course it was.

"Hiding from the world is not peace. Take it with you, no place is so big you cannot live there in your heart and this – my friend – it's only a small island. Go."

He went. He had hated himself for not just making himself known to her, but the stillness in him insisted just to lie low, to help her but not get in the way, confuse her or frighten her. He had not lost what he had gained on the Quiet Isle and the dogs he worked with helped him to maintain that stillness, animals always had. It was not rage and ager that began to return to him, just her. He had been glad of the hood for being able to watch her without her seeing, trying to guess how she would react to him.

And then she had spoken to him, almost as though she knew. He had felt worse than he had in a long time for not telling her; but that look in her eyes when she had spoken of his being dead- it led him to hope as he had never dared hope before. Even so he had never expected her to kiss him as she had when she finally knew him – as though she had missed him, thought of him, like he had her; even as though they had kissed before.

They talked about that later; in her mind they _had _kissed before. He wished he had been there for it.

They had almost argued badly; the moment she was finished flinging kisses and limbs around him she broke away embarrassed and demanded to know why he had not told her straight away. She had actually slapped him – and then instantly started to cry.

"I _missed _you," she wept – "I missed you _every day. _I thought you were _dead. _Do you _know _what that's like?"

"I couldn't – how could I possibly know that? I thought you – hated me, like your stupid sister."

"I – you – oh!" she sniffed, angrily, at that – "When you came to me – the night of the Blackwater – you kissed me, you threatened me, you offered to take me with you and then –"

She glared at him furiously – "You just _left!_"

It was not what he had expected, he did not know how to begin to explain himself, how she had sung to him and he had cried to hear such sweetness, such pure forgiveness, to feel her little hand so soft upon his face, to _cope _with tenderness – he could not. He had turned craven after all, like they all said, and not on account of the flames. He could not say any of that and so instead –

"I – kissed you?"

They argued about it a moment until she made a gesture that said she was done, looked at him very seriously and simply said –

"I was going to say _yes."_

It was a short step from there to kissing her, for real this time, shorter from there than he could have imagined, to marrying her.

And now, five years later, here he was, ruling The North at her side; little Ned and Robb, just as she had always wanted, and no leg to stand on when she reminded him that all those silly fairy tales _did _come true after all. And yes, she reminded him every day, and was in danger of becoming insufferably smug about it.

It was perfect. Like a dream he never needed to wake up from.

_x_

**I'm thinking the next chapter will probably be from Bran but I AM going to return to these two probably repeatedly, because Sansan. :-)**


	3. Bran

**3.**

**Bran**

It was not _quite _an accident, he remembered. He had been reaching for the crow. He had never reached so far in his life, pushing nervous but insistent fingers up out of his mind up and up into the sky. It was cold up in the clouds, and the tendrils of his mind drifted in the breeze. He was lost in the mists, his third eye gone blind, blown far beyond the crow before he ever realised he had gone too far. He had been just about to turn back, head back to the body in the snow when he had felt the other mind surprisingly close and – he could have sworn it – reaching back.

Somehow, up there, in the wind, they became tangled up, his consciousness and that of the other meshing like ribbons of different colours; impossible to pull away, he could only keep going until with a heave and a painful squeeze of the mind he found himself inside the body. It was no bird, or wolf, or any animal he could have imagined, and it felt so alien and strange he thought he was going to crack from it. In his panic he began to fall from the sky and so did the only thing he could do and beat his new wings back into the air current. In those few seconds he turned himself around, all the way from the horrible falling and the dread and the terror and the ground- that dreadful plummeting that beat at the insides. To suddenly pull up from that was better than a dream. None of his dreams had even offered this. _This _was where he had been trying to go all along. In those first hazy, nervous moments he knew it for certainty.

He opened his mouth to yell as he soared back up, wind in his face and rippling across his new body, felt his wings like sails, thin but so tough they floated on the cold pounding air. He could not yell, but he could roar.

And he was hot, gods he was so _hot. _He wondered if he could burn on his own insides; the blood was boiling and the heart that beat in his chest was like bubbling lava in there. The cold wind felt good to him but in the back of his mind he heard the other's mind dislike it. The other had scurried there when he slipped in and it spoke to him with all the timidity of the bird he had been trying to be. Though the words themselves were strange he understood their sentiment – _where am I, what is this, who are you? Drogon, I am Drogon._

_Drogon _he echoed in reply – _I'm Bran, I won't hurt you, there's room in here for us both – I've been looking for you for so long – _

It was only when he spoke it in his mind, this last, that he knew that it was true, that this was the end of his search, that he had travelled as North as he could to find a dragon to fly him back south.

_Bran – _he could feel the dragon tasting his name, finding it strange and exotic, other worldly even; then he felt the consciousness quiver and it was frightening to be alongside this great and ferocious mind and to feel it shiver, feel its thoughts fly apart into _dislike, dislike, no, please, scared –_

and so he let go, tumbled out of the dragon's mind and back down through the sky. He was so high up, terror sized him and he was afraid he would not find the way back to his body but then the crow was there and its voice was Jojen Reed's – _you have to go back, Bran._

_Back _he thought – _to the myself or to the dragon?_

_You are the dragon. You have to go back to it, but first to yourself, tell the others. You have to let the body die, tell them, tell Meera, she'll understand, she'll see you again – in Winterfell, and me, tell her, she'll see me – although she already knows._

_Winterfell? _Bran was all questions, always.

_Yes, in the end, after everything. Don't you see, Bran? You have to save the world. You always did._

Bran was surprised to find that this did not scare him nearly as much as the falling but before he could panic again he was back, laughing, crying, trying to explain it all to Meera. She had shouted at him at first, objected, tried to stop him from going again – until he told her it was Jojen who had told him to. He was longer saying goodbye to her than saying it to his own body. He had stared at Hodor for several moments, wondering what he could possibly say that he would understand. In the end he just said –

"Hodor," and hoped that it would be enough.

When he went back to Drogon the second time, it was with no intent to ever leave again. This time the dragon welcomed him, if warily, as an old acquaintance and grudgingly allowed him to share headspace. It was a large head space, Drogon admitted, and sometimes he got tired, room in here for both of them, like Bran had said. _But here, _he said – _there people I must have you meet._

Bran questioned Drogon's use of the world _people _when he found himself flying alongside the other dragons. They looked at him distrusting at first, but they flew with him all the same. In the cold sunlight their wings shone, every shade of fire, pale gold through ruby red to coal. _My brothers, _he thought, trying to outdo them with every twist of rippling scale and beat of powerful wing. They took him to King's Landing where he met the girl who looked like ice but was made of fire and when she, all unknowingly took over from where her father had left off and told them _burn it all _it was Brandon Stark of Winterfell who said no, who made the others follow his example and fly through the streets never hurting a thing, letting the people of Westeros see the power and beauty without the terror and the flame. There was no need for all this burning. Bran wished he could speak, it was a simple thing but for all the fire in her he thought the girl might understand. He nestled at her side and shook his head so gently she turned and stared into his eyes for the longest minutes until finally she blinked and whispered –

"Drogon?"

He shook his head, so gently, he was sure she had to see that he was barely even a dragon in spite of all appearance. Her eyes filled with tears and she put a hand on his nose. He felt his mind flex as it had not been able to before, not to control, just to feel, just to speak. He felt that the girl was half mad but that it did not have to matter, he felt that she was born to rule, a queen if ever he had met one, and that, if he just said the right thing, she could be _good. _Really good, like his father, like Sansa. But he just a boy after all and he did not know what the right thing to say was. So he whispered, from his mind to hers;

_It's good. Drogon's fine. You can take the Iron Throne. But – you don't have to burn people. Just be kind instead. It's better. And leave us Winterfell._

She looked at him for what felt like forever until he heard her voice come back to him faintly –

_It's – can I do this? Can I speak to you? Who _are _you?_

_I'm Bran, Brandon Stark of –_

_Winterfell. I see. Your sister has moved to take back the North, would you fight us?_

He had not known that, but he knew the answer to her question.

_No. She wouldn't want to fight. We could – have peace._

_Yes. _Drogon's mother smiled, and he realised with a sudden shock that she was only just shy of a child herself – _That would be good. Go to your sister in the North, she may have her dragon and I mine, from now on there shall be a Queen in the North and another in the South, I am Daenerys Stormborn of house Targaryen and as I have said it, it shall be done. _

It was perhaps not quite as simple as they made it sound that day, but in truth it was not far more complicated. At least not to Bran. The difficulty for him was more in communicating than in the technicalities of rule. It appeared he could not speak to everyone as he had to the new Queen. He had pressed against every mind that came near, testing for a response and got none until Sam and Gilly came to them from the Citadel. Gilly had surprised everyone by understanding him perfectly, and translated for everyone else. Sam, in awe of her as ever and in more terrified awe of Bran, was no sooner placed as Maester of Winterfell than he began a thorough study of dragons and how to communicate with them.

Slowly, like a shredded tapestry re–weaving itself, his family had come back together; Arya from across the sea, Osha and Rickon, bringing with them young Shireen Baratheon who was welcomed by his sister and her lord as though she were one of their own. Slowly, beautifully, the threads of family and happiness wove themselves into a place that combined all that used to be with the extraordinary potential of what it could grow into.

As he swooped away from Sansa's window he heard whispers from the room behind him that he wished he had not. Dragon or not there were still things he did not need to hear.

He woke up Arya instead. She groaned at him. Then she shouted. Then she threw a pillow. He set it on fire and flew away. When dragons laugh the sound is like warm thunder, mellow with mead.

_x_

**Okay please be kind – I normally almost always write romance-y stuff, indeed porn, so this was a massive change of style and substance for me! Also it went way more serious than I really thought it was gonna – so I'll make up for it by having the next chapter be much sillier. It's gonna be Arya I think, after that I'll probably go back to Sansa, cause it's weird writing a chapter without her!**


	4. Arya

**4.**

**Arya**

She could have done without being woken early by a dragon. To make her disapproval clear, she came down to breakfast as late as she could without missing it altogether. She regretted her decision as soon as she sat down; her sister's stinking husband had already eaten everything good.

"How can anyone eat _all _that bacon?" she grumbled for the third time. He rolled his eyes at her; it was not a pretty sight.

"Shut up about it."

"_And _Bran set my pillow on fire," she sulked. Several voices sprung up at once;

"_I _got bacon!"

"Thought we said no fire –"

"_Why _did Bran set your pillow on fire?"

"I'll eat all the damned bacon I want to!"

"Bran, _did _you burn Arya's bed linen?"

Bran was stretched out in front of the fire at the other end of the hall, as still and placid as a stone sculpture of a dragon. He replied with a low, rather lazy, rumbling noise;

"He says she threw it at him, what did she expect?" Gilly translated mildly. She got up from the table and went over to sit beside Bran. The dragon pushed his nose up into her hand for a stroke. Arya watched her smile and bend in to tickle the massive creature and rolled her eyes at the way the two seemed to play with each other; it had to be the strangest friendship she had ever seen.

"Arya should know better than to throw her pillows at a dragon," her sister was saying, but before Arya could get too annoyed Sansa hailed down a serving girl and asked her to bring more bacon. She chalked this one up as a victory and stuck her tongue out at The Hound. She knew he wasn't The Hound anymore, not really, but she could not get the moniker out of her head all the same. He glared back at her witheringly and stuck his tongue out back at her when he thought Sansa was not looking. She was. She was _always _looking.

"Stop that you two!" she chided for the millionth time in her life – "Honestly, how old are you both – Arya you should know better and Sandor – you should _really _know better."

But she said it more affectionately, Arya noticed and kissed him lightly at the end of it. She watched him smile back at her sister just like a big dumb dog and interrupted them loudly with a round of retching sounds, finishing off with a resounding–

"Yuck!"

"Oh shut up!" Sansa turned back to her, temporarily forgetting that she was supposed to be the mature one – "Or I'll kiss you too!"

"Ewwww!"

"The children are better behaved than you!"

At the far end of the table Shireen and the little ones smiled angelically just to prove her right. Rickon glared and stabbed the table just to prove, she was sure, that he could be just as bad – almost as though he was proud of it. Before she could come up with another riposte Sandor intercepted the bacon that was supposed to be hers. She yelled, Sansa smoothed, Sandor grudgingly gave her half her bacon.

"He's such a pig," Arya grumbled with a mouth full of bacon – "You should have seen him eat pig's feet – you wouldn't have married him _then."_

"Oh, you should have seen yourself eat stew," he fired back.

"Well I learned it from you didn't I?"

"Go fuck yourself."

"Ohhh –" Arya raged, fighting for a reply – "Dracarys!"

Bran growled softly.

"He says -" Gilly blushed a little, but grinning – "Fuck off with your _Dracarys."_

"Sandor –" Sansa sighed, "Look, you're even teaching the _dragon _bad language."

Sandor made a noise that attempted to be a protest.

"You should have heard him go on about you," Arya headed into a new form of attack – "He never shut up about you, it was Sansa this and Little Bird that until I wanted to vomit –"

"Oooh _Gendry –" _Sandor mocked, to hide the fact that she was making him squirm with awkwardness – "Gendry's so pretty, he could take you any day, you should see his muscles –Spending the day at the forge are we? How many blades do you need?"

"Oh shut up!" lame though it was she had gone red. She threw a bit of bacon at him. He ate it.

"Thanks."

"Oh how lovely," Sansa sighed with weariness at the both of them – "It's good to see one of you learning manners."

Arya's eyes were tired from rolling;

"I'm going out!" she grunted – "Enough of you all, I'm going –"

"Going where exactly?" Sansa asked gently, though Arya could hear the smile in her voice without having to look.

"Going down the forge," she muttered. She could hear Sandor's laughter ringing in her ears all the way out the door.

It was a beautiful morning in the courtyard, the sun streaming in over the walls, spreading a soft blanket of warmth across the stones that would toast them by midday. She stopped when she was far enough away from everyone and where they would not see and smiled to herself; the morning was going perfectly. The wake up routine of banter and abuse was almost as sweet and warming as the sunshine.

And now the gold warmed her face, a light breeze sent up the rustle of leaves and the smell of the trees, she could hear the ever thrilling sound of metal clanging reaching up to her from the forge and the day offered itself up to her in noise and smell and sensation.

She ran down to meet it.

_x_

**I know, I know, this went kinda crack, eh well, I'll go more serious in the next one, which is gonna be Sansa again cause I can't stay away! – I may even do some pwp again finally! **


	5. Sansa 2

**5.**

**Sansa**

She stood overlooking the training yard, watching the boys with their wooden sticks, Arya trying to oversee their training – such as it was – but only really getting in the way. She smiled as Ned accidentally got her in the leg with his stick and all pretence at serious instruction flew out into the winds in favour of a yelling tumble.

She felt a hand cover hers on the wall, smiled and squeezed it without needing to turn round; a simple touch was like a kiss to the neck, sending warm shivers through her every time. Her heart gave a smile and a little involuntary leap and _truly – _she thought _every time and after five years? _But this was what love was, she knew it now, that smile at the heart and the shiver in the skin; how a simple touch had so much lovely power long after it should have become commonplace. She had thought once it was something else, something big and epic like a song. But it wasn't. It was small and sweet, like a baby animal to take care of and nothing more precious in the world.

Every time he touched her reminded her of that first night they had spent together; it felt like she had been waiting for it for as long as she had any idea of what she was waiting for. She could hardly believe she had made it to this point still a maid, for every threat and attempt upon her she had experienced since she first left Winterfell. And here she was, back in her own home, in the room that had once been her parents- and more than that, back in herself, _Sansa Stark of Winterfell- _she said it to herself every night, the same words she had spoken to Littlefinger before she pushed him out the moon door – _who else would I be? _

It was a maid that turned to him in the light of the fire, safe behind its guard so as not to trouble him, but it was not the frightened, trembling girl he had first seen. She had worried in those early days that she had changed too much for him to love her but soon found that it was his knowledge of who she was that reminded her herself.

"Kiss me," she whispered, but it was almost an order; wildfire danced ready across her lips and something in her voice must have made it clear to him that she was asking for more than a kiss because he asked her if she was sure. He was so gentle, so tender to her that she would have felt bad for ever being afraid of him if there was room in her right at this moment for feeling bad. But there was not.

"I lived for two years off one kiss that never happened," she smiled, aware now of her error and what it entailed – "How long do you think I could go on anything else?"

In the end she still moved first, but he moved to meet her and there was lightning on their lips when they met. If she had been afraid that he could even be _too _gentle it fell away in moments after the first tentative touch. He tasted her, then fell upon her in a hunger that might have scared her if she did not meet it with her own. She had never felt drowning to feel so delicious, but she was sinking in his hands as they grabbed for her, trying to take all of her in at once. She had convinced herself she would take this slowly, but she was burning up with want and could feel his hardness pressing against her with an urgency he was trembling to control.

"Bed –" she croaked, hoarsely. Somehow they found it, the couple of metres seeming like a mile, and fell upon it clumsily, half laughing, half crying, but everything went quiet and breathless as he started to work out the lacings on her dress.

She had imagined this about a hundred times and more, her lord undressing her for the first time, in reverential perfection. But when she looked at him, she saw reverential yes, but clouded with confusion, and his fingers fumbled awkwardly as though he was the one who had never done this before. He groaned in frustration.

"Surely you've –" she began, but broke off when he looked away furtively.

"But you're not –" she supposed she should not have pressed it but she was too astonished not to.

"Of course not," he growled, trying to regain ground beneath a sneer – "But whores do that bit for you and you –"

"I'm no whore," she finished for him, mildly affronted.

"No –" he shook his head, voice sinking back into softness – "No little bird, you're something I never expected – always wanted but –"

She put a finger to his lips to silence him before he started babbling, sat up a little and wriggled out of her dress herself. When she looked back up at him he was staring at her in utter silence and she could feel his face wet beneath her fingers. She leaned up to kiss it away, her hands sliding under his shirt almost as though she knew what she was doing. At least he helped her to get it off. When they were finally both out of their clothes she had stared back at him, nervous for the first time.

King's Landing had convinced her she would always be afraid of this moment and her time in the Eyrie had solidified her intent to maintain not so much her maidenhead – though that too –as her _free will_ in the matter. She had been sure on many occasions that it was a promise to herself she would never be able to keep, but here she was, and nervous though she was she had never truly been less afraid in her life, and it was his hand that trembled against her face, and he looked at her as though he could not believe she was real.

"Don't," she said, and he frowned – "Don't doubt that I'm real," she clarified – "I've never been more so."

He shook his head at her, smiling crookedly – "It's not that, little bird –" he bit his lip and she found herself staring, entranced – "It's that you're _mine." _

"I am yours," she said simply, clasping her hands around his neck – "And you are mine."

She felt a lovely shiver at the words, knowing she would be saying them again soon, though somehow the promise felt deeper now – it felt somehow as though she _had _waited until her wedding night after all.

When she leaned up further to kiss him, she had never felt more beautiful, more alive. His lips were fascinating, hers on fire with a burn he could never hate. He was hard and soft all at once and she felt his chest press against hers, skin sliding on skin and his manhood pressing hard against her thigh. She felt magical, as though in the grip of a spell, and her fingers travelled across his chest, following the paths of so many scars, as though they were runes carved into flesh. He was _so _very scarred and hard beneath her fingers; she pressed into them in fascination, both aroused and in sympathy for the wounds he had taken. She had not had any idea she could feel both at the same time but it did not last long as her wandering fingers found his hardness and anything like sympathy fled in an instant. He shuddered as she curled a hand around him and her cheeks felt hot as her legs parted so completely, almost involuntarily.

"Please –" she whimpered, needing now and almost desperate, uncertain exactly how this could possibly work, he was so big and she – "I don't know –"

He shushed her gently, one hand sliding gentle and rough between her legs, ghosting across her thighs and making her nearly scream as they brushed a spot that set her whole skin screaming, brushing it far too quickly for satisfaction and too obviously to ignore.

"Gods –" he rasped, as he touched her – "You're so wet –"

"Is that – good?" she whispered, not quite sure. He just smiled at her and ever so gently slid a finger up inside her. She had never even touched herself like that; even this invasion seemed to stretch her, but he took it so slowly it barely hurt and within moments she was twisting and pressing herself into his hand. He pressed a thumb against that sweet incredible spot again and she could almost feel herself opening for the next finger he slid in. She could feel her insides dancing, shivering like a candle flame and she tried to bite back her cries as she twisted beneath him, he held her head in his hand, one arm around her shoulders, holding her just as she felt like the bed was falling away and she was spinning through the air, wild and straining with want. She felt herself brushing so close to something wonderful and just as she opened her mouth to scream in earnest he took his hand away. She screamed a little at that – but in frustration - and glared at him frantically.

He tried to smile at her, but it came but as a grimace; he needed her too much now to be as gentle as he would have liked, his cock was killing him but he still made himself nudge it gently against her, coating himself in her wetness before pressing the head into her. She bit her lip and it was all he could do to stop, but she shook her head desperately –

"Don't – don't stop, please -" He surged into her in relief and she could not help but cry out it felt so strange, so new and she was so full of him she wondered that she did not break. But she did not break, not at all and he worked her so gently with his fingers still that it sweetened the pain and dispersed it. He thrust into her almost more slowly than he could bear at first and then harder as her whimpers of mingled pleasure and pain mellowed into sighs of astonished delight at the delicious friction and far from breaking her, she almost felt like all the tattered pieces of herself were being enchanted back together as the sweet singing sensations spread throughout her body, magic in her fingertips that she was sure he could feel as she dug them into his back.

He had waited for this for so long he had always feared he could not last long and she heard him whimper brokenly with the effort of trying to hold on longer. He was so strong, so much bigger than her, to hear him whimper like that made her shiver like leaves and she hardly knew what to do, but caught his eye and did not look away as she fell apart completely, screaming as all the shimmering leaves of her scurried from their branch and she fell apart into a warm and blissful wind.

"Gods –" he groaned as she clenched around him, shuddering all his lust and need and love uncontrollably into her as he pressed her tight to him – "Gods – Sansa –"

He had never called her by her name before, not to her face, and she realised, later, when she could think straight again, that when she had whimpered his name in gasping return, it was the first time she had even said it.

_x_

**Arrrgh, this was so tricky for me! I have such huge love for the idea that, especially given all the rape threats and the times Sansa thought her first time would be rubbish – that actually it could be perfect and beautiful and, more magically still not even hurt her, because y'know, it doesn't have to – also that she would be the one in control. But I normally write mad slightly brutal rough sex scenes so I'm not sure if I did this right at all. Eeeeeeee *closes eyes and offers chapter nervously up to the world*. :-)**

**Who shall I write next, I'm thinking maybe Jaime? :-)**


	6. Jaime

**Quick note – I totally head canon Brienne as genderqueer and asexual but not aromantic so if you hate that interpretation you won't like this chapter, obviously everyone has their own head canons and that's cool, so I don't mind anyone disagreeing just don't hate. :-)**

**6.**

**Jaime**

"You're riding with me to Winterfell today, then?"

It was phrased in such a way that he could have taken it as a question or a fact. He decided to take it as a statement, and responded with appropriate disdain.

"Oh am I. Am I _really." _He made an _ugh _sound and almost said _do I have to _but he supposed it would make him sound like a petulant child and held himself back. Cersei always said he was a child, a big baby, a whining imbecile, and so on and so on, _ad nauseum._

There was a time when he had thought he could never, would never live without her. He never had done in all his life. He had thought that losing her would be like losing a limb. Well, he had survived _that_ to begin with. This had almost been easier; she had lived on more than his missing hand had. It had been easier to internalise her than it was to learn to fight left handed. Well, he did not need to make a space for her voice in his head, she had always had it.

But it was the Cersei of long ago that lived on, not the desperate, scheming bitch of her later years. He was almost glad she had turned into somebody he hated before she died, he was not sure he could have survived her loss if she had not. The Cersei who lived on in him was the girl who had played the peasant, the girl whose smiles were like a fine rain and whose tears made the sun come out. She always was contrary, impossible to read. She was no different in his mind, only – better. A better person perhaps; the girl he had always dreamed she was, imagined she could be and who she never could have been in life.

He could not even miss her; all hint of that girl had died so long ago.

It made it easier that this one was as different from Cersei as a woman could be. In fact woman was barely even the right word. He had suggested a long time ago that they needed to make up a new word for whatever she was and it must have spoken weights as to how far they had come that he did not mean it as an insult and she did not take it as one.

He wondered what Cersei would say of where he had ended up; in quiet retirement not far from Winterfell, and with Brienne of all people. He could hardly credit it himself. She – though again a new word was needed – was everything that Cersei was not, honest and brave and noble to an often tedious thought. Ugly too, he would have once been the first to say – though he could not see it any more, not since he had first seen those blue eyes shining in any kind of happiness. He had been so delighted to have put it there that for the first time, more than ever with Cersei, he could have honestly said he knew what love was.

It was not a love he ever expected to find, in truth he would rarely speak aloud and no more would she, but they demonstrated it as they had from the start, each leaping to a steely fierce defence of the other that left everyone else behind.

He still called her _wench, _though he never thought of her as such, and sometimes, when she knew he would not take it seriously, she still called him _kingslayer. _She would follow it with a smile more beautiful than he could have imagined her capable of; it was all teeth, yes, but beauty was not about looks with her, he had come to realise that well enough. It was not as though he was so pretty any more himself- Cersei had been right about that at least.

Any sexuality he had had it seemed, had died with her. He never had been interested in anyone else, and now he was content enough that way. He had always assumed Brienne to be lying when she had claimed no interest in the matter but, after Cersei's death, for the first time he had come to understand her together. And that was fine. He had never imagined he would be able to share a bed with both no sex and no awkwardness, but it was pleasure and a peace that took him by delightful surprise.

He had questioned the location at first;

"Why Winterfell?"

"I swore an oath to protect the Stark girls," she said for the hundredth time.

"You swore an oath to a dead woman who tried to have you hanged," he pointed out.

"I swore to protect them and that's what I'll do," she repeated stubbornly.

"Anyone ever tell you you're _the _dullest, most predictable –"

"Repeatedly. And it was always you."

He had always assumed his irritation with her was simply that – irritation. He had never guessed it could be affection.

"I don't think she needs your protection," he said, after they had first gone to meet the new Queen in the North.

"No," Brienne had agreed.

"Even if she did not have our old hound to protect her – there's a girl who can look after herself". By all the gods – he remembered the day they had first arrived in Winterfell and the Sansa he had seen there and never thought he would have said such a thing.

"But her sister does," Brienne insisted. Jaime had started to argue that he had never met a girl who so well knew her way around a sword but once before.

"Oh she knows her way around a sword. It's not enough. I've never seen a girl need more help knowing her way around herself."

He had looked at her, smirking; he had seen the way she watched Arya.

"Dear gods," he sighed, resignedly – "It must be like looking in a mirror."

"Shut up".

That was the beginning of their relations with Winterfell; _friendship _Brienne called it, he would have tentatively said _alliance _and never admitted that she had the right of it more than he did.

It was harder for him than for Brienne, to find his way into their friendship. He supposed it always would be. He had heard that they had a dragon but was not prepared for it to attack him the first day they set foot within the walls. It had swooped down out of the sky, pinning him beneath its claws and roared, opening its jaws to stream fire into his face.

"Don't you bloody dare!" he had heard as something large crashed into the beast's side.

"Sandor?" he squinted, sitting up in the dust, but his erstwhile Hound was paying him no attention –

"We do not flame people!" he was shouting at the dragon as though it was a child – "Sansa -"

The lady had come running at the commotion – "Tell him!"

The dragon was clawing at the ground sullenly, glaring at the two people stood between them.

Sansa had held out a hand to calm the dragon and Jaime was astounded to see it have some effect, though she glanced at him a little too fiercely for comfort –

"That's Jaime Lannister," she said, as though this excused the animal's behaviour.

"I know who it bloody is! You said he – " he indicated the dragon – "Didn't attack people"

"He pushed him out a window!"

"I beg your pardons –" Jaime was getting to his feet finally – "But I think I'd know if I pushed a bloody great dragon out a window."

"That's my brother Bran," she said coldly, folding her arms and looking at him pointedly.

"Ah." Jaime stated, grimacing, working it out. He looked the dragon in the eyes, cringing a little –

"I suppose a simple _sorry _isn't going to do it?"

The dragon spat a tiny flame in response.

"No fucking fire, I said!" Sandor roared at it. He continued to rail at it whilst Sansa coolly welcomed him to Winterfell.

He was welcome on Brienne's account at first, though they had heard how he had searched for her and Arya and understood he genuinely wished to help them now, had done for a long time. But it had to be up to Bran when and if to forgive him, and he could not but accept this, saddened as he always had been by his one greatest misdeed. Thankfully Brienne and Arya were already bonding in the training yard by the time Sansa was finished speaking

It was Clegane who made him really feel welcome first, as soon as Jaime apologised for ever thinking he had been raping and pillaging the river lands.

"I should have known better," he admitted – "That's not you, is it?"

"I'd have thought the same of myself at one time too," Sandor shrugged.

As soon as Sandor had come to realise that Jaime no longer saw himself as his superior they became easily united both in distrust of Bran the dragon and in a shared disregard for the Kingsguard they had both been part of and the _true knights _who had destroyed their faith in the title. Sansa had come round to him soon enough, he suspected largely on her husband's account, and the children had followed soon upon Brienne's.

It was the dragon that was hardest and, when he thought about it, he could see no reason why Bran would ever forgive him. He would not forgive someone who had crippled him. And yet, one day, after many months of back and forth between their minor castle and Winterfell, he was walking through the Weirwood when a great warm weight nudged him so hard in the shoulder that he fell over. When he saw it was the dragon he got ready to scream – like a girl if he had to – but a girl, who could only be of Wildling descent, came out from under the shadow of a wing and pulled him to his feet.

"He says he forgives you," she said and she grinned – "But don't do it again."

"Yes well – I was planning to, of course." He looked at the huge creature nervous through the mask of sarcasm.

"He wouldn't be a dragon if he hadn't followed the three eyed raven he says, and he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't lost the use of his legs –"

The dragon made a little rumble;

"He says he would have grown up to be some rubbishy knight like you. But on the whole he can't not forgive you forever he says. He likes being a dragon."

After that everything was easier. He would never stop being nervous of the great, oily black beast. Often he would turn around with the suspicion that he was being followed and find the creature creeping behind him, cocking its head and licking its lips. He could swear to the gods it was laughing at him. Every time he argued with Arya – and she was quite as obstreperous as Sandor had warned him, she would end it by saying Bran was going to eat him, but over the years it had become almost as friendly as trading insults with Brienne.

"I promised Arya," she was saying now, and no doubt she had, for the two of them were thick as thieves – "We're going to train a little and I believe everyone's riding out this afternoon to take lunch in the woods."

"Let me check this – you're enticing me to Winterfell – for a _picnic? _How old do you think I am?"

"Do you really want me to answer that question?" She looked at him, weary already and it was only just after breakfast.

"Actually, I love picnics".

She rolled her eyes at him as they headed out to the stables. He rolled his back. They made faces. He grinned, he felt more golden than being a lion could ever have made him.

_x_

**Maybe it's unrealistic to think Bran could forgive Jaime – but I think he's a very forgiving person/ dragon and if anyone could do that it would be Bran. So okay ****_now _****I'm taking suggestions for who to do next! :-)**

**By the way, if anyone thinks I'm awesome enough yous can follow me on tumblr at ****_shadow-in-the-shade. _****It's multi – fandom with much sansan. Enjoy. :-)**


	7. Hot Pie

**7.**

**So, it occurred to me I should probably write a chapter that actually progresses the Day in Question, there's a picnic happening, there's cake, and so, though I'm surprised myself to be doing this, this chapter is from the perspective of…..**

**Hot Pie**

It was such a lovely day out, he could smell it even down in the kitchens; it came rushing in on a breeze, clinging to Arya and Gendry as they pelted into the kitchen like they were still a couple of kids.

"Hot Pie, come on!" Arya wailed – "Everyone's waiting for you, now!"

"Everyone's waiting for the food," Gendry amended – "Is that chocolate?"

_Like a little pack of wolves _he thought, grinning. Well everyone was a wolf around here, but the way those two clattered around they could have been a little pack all their own. They were taking deep breaths now, sniffing the air like they really were dogs, Arya was all but rolling around in a joy of pain, inhaling as though she could eat the picnic food through her nose.

It _did _smell good. He knew it smelled good. He had been getting ingredients in for days. There hadn't been a special event for him to cook for in far too long and so they had created this one and while everyone else's greatest joy would be in the eating, Hot Pie's was always going to be in the baking.

"Get out of that!" He pushed Arya away from a bowl of tart filling; she still threatened to stab him on an almost daily basis, but he had weight over her and righteous indignation on behalf of his pastries- and he knew she never really would anyway.

Fruit tarts were Jaime Lannister's favourite. Chocolate was Gendry's. Arya said chocolate was hers as well; at least at the moment she did. Her favourite seemed to change every week depending on her mood. Everyone knew the Lady of Winterfell's preference and Hot Pie had become as skilled in lemon cakes as any baker in Westeros; more even than most.

He had never imagined, when hawking pies in King's Landing, that he would one day become head of Winterfell's great kitchen. It was, to him, what becoming a knight had been to the boys he had grown up with in Flea Bottom. He had counted himself lucky wherever he had ended up and there was any kind of kitchen for him to make a home in; even in Harrenhall where everything had terrified him, he had taken comfort in the smell of baking bread and stewing fruit, basked in the sweet and savoury aromatic fumes that permeated the very walls of the place. Where everywhere else in that vast horrible castle had smelled of death and awfulness the kitchens at least had offered bread and comfort.

Food _was _all the comfort in the world to Hot Pie. Where there was enough of it, he reasoned, you were safe, safe from death and pain. Hunger was pain, food safety. It may not have been the deepest philosophy of life but it was one that you could live on more than comfortably.

He had weathered all the wars of the realm baking in the roadside tavern and the day a highborn lady he did not know came riding in asking for him personally to come bake in her great castle he had been suspicious to the point of refusal right up until Gendry and Arry – _Arya _rather – had stepped out from behind her, grinning and saying he was coming with them if they had to hogtie him and throw him in the back of a wagon.

They had _not _had to force him; they were his people and he had known it for a while. His _pack _as Arya called it and he could not argue with that.

He bundled the last of the food up quickly with those couple of idiots hanging over him, hurrying him. You could still smell the bread from one of the bags. He threw them out to the others to help carry and when they got up into the courtyard a general cheer broke out at the sight of the people with the food.

Some of the party had gone ahead on foot, but Arya had been waiting anyway; she wanted to ride with Brienne, she said. It made Hot Pie grin to see how everyone had come together, remembering the day she and Pod had found him in the inn. Arya had never got the perfect dire wolf loaf he baked for her that day – Pod had sheepishly admitted to him later that he had eaten it. He had mumbled the admission as though afraid Hot Pie might have his head off for it, but when he had added that it was delicious it had been the start of a firm friendship. Podrick still squired for Brienne and now Jaime and Hot Pie was pleased to see he had joined them for the day and was loading his pony with as much food as it could happily carry - and plenty of his now perfected dire wolf loaves.

The party that rode out from Winterfell that day was a jolly one. Voices soared up above the sound of horse's hooves, laughing out into the summer air. Hot Pie soon found himself surrounded by his friends, Podrick and Maester Sam always seeming to gravitate towards him. Even in the presence of such high up folk, Hot Pie could feel like a king himself and looked forward to the unveiling of his kingdom when it was time to present everyone with the picnic.

By the time they got to the clearing in the woods, the queen and her entourage had decked it out as though for a great celebration, piles of soft blankets tucked amongst the leaves for sitting on, Stark banners flying from the trees, their white and silver glimmering green and gold in the sun and shimmer of the leaves. As he started to unpack the food he was all but vibrating with pride and joy that only increased as whoops went up all around at the sights and smells that assailed them.

There were fresh baked loaves and mounds of new churned butter, wheels of cheese and plates of cold meats, glistening hams and pies stuffed with meat and eggs. To one side of the clearing Jaime Lannister and Sandor Clegane were rolling casks of golden ale from the wagon they had brought ahead with them, laughing through grunts at the work and beaming in a manner designed to assure everyone that the alcohol was absolutely safe in their capable hands and they were not claiming it all from themselves, honest. Ser Brienne was watching them with gentle tolerance, now and then shouting at Arya and Rickon and the children who had scaled the trees like monkeys and were dropping branches on the people trying to work.

The cakes were Hot Pie's pride and joy and he would only trust Pod and Sam to the task of helping him unload. There were cinnamon buns and honey rolls, ginger cakes and peaches stewed in mead, fruit tarts and chocolate cakes, pastries filled with strawberries, cream and custard. He shouted gently at Shireen who snuck in under them and made a move for the plain sponge cake but Sandor quickly intervened on her behalf, declaring her exempt from having to wait – at least for sponge cake.

When Shireen had first come to them Hot Pie had been incredulous that a princess could know so little of cake, could not believe the austerity of the circumstances she had lived under that meant she had never tried _any kind of cake ever. _He had almost cried to see her eyes widen as she nibbled her first simple sponge. She had been so overjoyed, declared nothing in world had ever tasted so good and would never again be convinced that anything could taste better. They had tried her with all manner of fancy cakes, suggested the addition of dried fruit, jams, icing, anything but she had persistently, happily, and benignly pursued her adoration of sponge cake and nothing else. Sandor, who had very quickly adopted an utter adoration for the girl, had insisted Hot Pie bake one today just for her. As if he had ever planned not to.

He had baked a lot of things especially for the people whose favourite they were and as he came to the bottom of his bags he suddenly felt a sinking sensation of utter horror.

"Oh" he wailed, going pale – "Oh no!"

"What?" several people asked him at once, turning round at the utter distress in his voice.

"Oh no!" He wailed again, frozen in shock at his mistake.

"It can't be _that _bad," someone said.

"No really, Hot Pie –" the queen added sweetly – "Everything looks wonderful. Whatever it is I'm sure we can do without."

"Noooooo," he howled, softly, hardly able to get out the terrible words – "I – M'lady - I – forgot – the – lemon – cakes!"

"Oh," she swallowed. Everyone was suddenly staring at him like he had killed someone and put them in the meat pies. Arya started to laugh; he turned to her annoyed –

"It's _your _fault! You were hurrying me!"

"It's quite alright," Sansa said, though he could hear that she was just being nice to make him feel better. Her disappointment was the worst thing he could have caused – "Really, Hot Pie – don't be sad …."

He was just starting to feel like he had ruined everything _ever _when he heard a rough "Ahem –" as Sansa's husband tapped her on the arm, unveiling as he did….a whole extra basket of lemon cakes! Hot Pie felt as though he had been rescued by magical spirits.

"I brought spares," Sandor mumbled and anyone could see the Queen's blue eyes shine with delight. She gave a little squeal and kissed her beloved on the nose. He tried very hard to look like a man who had _not _just been kissed on the nose. Luckily for him everyone's attention was just then distracted by the Wildling girls, Osha and Gilly, swooping in on the back of the dragon.

_x_

**Well, that became a hideous cross between Game of Thrones and something out of Enid Blyton! I wonder who likes ginger beer? :-)**

**I promise this ****_will _****have serious chapters again at some point, and issues like Brienne's knighthood ****_will _****be properly addressed! Thinking of which, who would people like to hear from in future chapters? The net one, I think will be Sam but I'm open to suggestions!**


	8. Samwell

**8.**

**Samwell**

"Close your mouth Slayer, you'll catch flies".

Sam looked around, only a little bit guiltily, to find out who had spoken. He went red as he did so; still colouring up under any kind of spotlight even after all these years, all he had seen and done. By the time he saw that it was Jaime that had spoken he still had not thought to close his mouth. Sat beside him, Podrick pushed his chin up for him; it had become such a common gesture he no longer even had to look at Sam to perform it.

Of course it was Jaime, Sam thought; Jaime relished the opportunity to call someone else _Slayer _for a change and he had been utterly overjoyed at the chance to do so with a sworn Maester. As for Sam, where he might once have felt bullied by the comment now he smiled, only slightly apologetically. It had taken him a long time to understand affection in the form of mockery, but he was just about there, finally.

It was, surprisingly to everyone else, Ser Brienne who had explained it to him. He remembered it well; it had been Jaime on that occasion as well. It was one of his early visits to Winterfell and he had just been introduced to Hot Pie. Jaime had laughed and said with a name like that he was surprised the good Maester had not yet eaten him.

It was not that Jaime had even known that Sam had heard the comment, but he had felt mortified all the same. He had thought he was a man grown, a man formerly of the Night's Watch, a Maester of the Citadel, beyond and above all the _who ate all the pies _jokes and worthy of some respect. He was even starting to feel it.

"I suppose I was wrong," he sighed, blurting all of this out to Brienne when she came to sit beside him on the courtyard bench and asked him what was wrong.

"I'll never be a man grown, just a fat boy from Horn Hill," he added. He had expected vague kindness; she had seemed so sympathetic, but at this she just made a quiet snort of disgust;

"Yes, and I'm just the freak from Tarth. Why should it matter what you were? I'm also the first woman in all Westeros to become a Knight, and what are you? The first man to kill a White Walker, and I heard that was just the start of it."

"But –" hurt latched itself to Sam easily and it was hard to shake, even in the face of such reason – "People don't forget. It doesn't seem to matter how much I work, what I make of myself, people still try and put me back down."

"Oh, for the gods' sake. _You _put yourself back down-"

"No, but they –"

"Shut up. Yes you do. Who says you have to listen? You're almost as ridiculous as Jaime. You're all so ready to give up. People never stop, they never will, you think that means you are what they say?" She snorted more rudely than before – "Give me a break. If I listened to everything they said about me I'd have jumped off the cliffs of Tarth when I was twelve. You _do _eat pies. You earned that name _Slayer. _Buggering hells, you think I'd go around moping if I had a name like that?"

"But it's not –"

"It _is. _It's not the people keep you down, it's _you _wallowing in your imagined slights. And here – now – do you think they even mean it unkindly?"

"No, but –"

"Then shut up about it. Think about how nice you are, how respectful to your father, to the people you hate. So what do you think being rude means? You're clever, you tell me."

Sam had tried to think about this way before. People had tried to tell him. But somehow, this time, hearing it from someone he barely knew, and a respected lady knight at that, it somehow clicked like a switch in his head. Brienne nodded, watching the light come on in his eyes. But he couldn't quite – not without a final weak fight –

"But Ser Jaime –"

"_Jaime," _she said, smiling wryly – "Is an ass. You should hear the things he calls me. Do you get it now?"

He smiled himself then, widely; he felt several stone lighter already from the weight that seemed to lift from him.

-x-

It was hard not to gawp, looking up at Gilly on the front of the dragon, Osha – not yet quite as used to this – with her head down against her back and her arms wrapped around the younger girl's waist.

Gilly. Gilly for Gillyflower; she had opened up when the spring came, unfolding like he would never have expected. His brothers in the Watch had laughed that he only saw anything in her because she was the only girl who had ever spoken to him but if every lady in the realm had paid him attention it still would only ever have been Gilly. He looked at her now and his heart swelled; the sunlight picked out a fire in her hair that winter had always kept hidden and her skin flashed gold as they came in through the trees. She was so little and so mighty, it dazzled him to watch her, the queen flying the dragon. All Wildling women could be queens if they so much as said they were, she had told him regally one day, and he knew it every time he saw her in flight. He could not help but be proud; she was her own, she had never been anything else, but when people referred to her as his, his girl, he could not argue with that now either and neither would she.

They could never marry; he knew that, but the rules could change and it was no longer impossible for a Maester to live in a state of marriage that was not and they had whispered vows to each in the Weirwood of Winterfell that no god worth believing in could ever think to frown upon.

She swung down off of Bran as though she had been riding a dragon all her life, helping Osha down. Osha cursed all the way, more vehemently than was at all necessary, to hide the fact that she had both loved and feared her first flight in equal measure. They were not mothers of dragons these two, but they were no less for being so, as the little ones reminded them. Rickon, not really so little anymore, had long since come to think of Osha as his mother and remember her above his own. He ran to her now, offering to slay the beast that had scared her.

"You can't slay him, Little Lord, that's your brother." She gave the sigh that passed in her for a laugh – "And I wasn't scared," she lied. Rickon hit Bran on the nose with a wooden sword and they ran off into the woods to re-enact a mighty battle between dragon and knight.

Meanwhile little Sam and Aemon had run to Gilly, clamouring to be allowed to fly with her next time. She laughed and patted them like wolf cubs;

"You'll have to ask your father".

Sam groaned as they turned their imploring faces his way, though he could never quite hide his joy at hearing her call him their father even though it wasn't technically true. Well it was true in every other way he supposed, he felt like he grew taller each time she said it.

"You'll have to come with them Sam," she teased, laughing because she knew how he started to protest every time it was suggested and he was sure Bran was quietly protesting too but was too polite a dragon to make it known.

"Maybe one day," he said for the millionth time, and this time when everyone laughed at him he felt it dance in his ears like love.

"We're all here then," the queen was saying.

"Not quite!" Arya yelled, from so far up a tree now that they could barely see her – "Look, Nymeria's coming with the pups".

"_Pups _my arse –" Sandor yelled up at her – "They're no more pups than you are!" A well-aimed stick fell neatly on his head and -

"Fetch that!" Arya yelled from above.

"I'll save it for them!" he yelled back.

Sam took a deep breath at the sound of a small pack of dire wolves approaching their party and shook his head in amazement at this life, for almost everybody just looked up at their approach with pleasure and barely a dash of fear. _Dragons and dire wolves _Sam thought – _I must be a wizard as well as the slayer because this is the fantasy I once only read about, right here and now._

_x_

**Yes, genuinely, the next chapter is gonna be all about puppies and how Nymeria found her humans again. I might make it another Sandor POV cause I've missed him in the last few chapters! :-)**


	9. Sandor 2

**9.**

**Sandor**

He remembered. It was one of those first early days of spring, one of the first mornings he had woken up early to a smell drifting in through the window that was quite distinctly and unmistakably _spring. _It was familiar, in a distant way; he could only just remember back to the last one, before the long summer; he had been a young man then, young and so angry. It seemed to him now that he had been twisted up inside and out back then, a thing created of knotty bits of string held together with battered armour. No, he had no nostalgia for youth. It was strange, to look at the sleeping girl beside him and realise that she was no older now than he had been then. She was miraculous; to look once was always to look again. He stroked her hair upon the pillow, bright like a fire that would never frighten him; she had untied him, somehow unpicked all those knots inside that he had thought could never be untangled.

It was barely six in the morning but the world was _alive_ outside. One thing he had learned on the Quiet Isle was that the world was always full of noise. It was true this morning- he could hear the breeze ruffle the curtains, the birds setting up a cacophony outside, his wife's snuffling breathing as she slept – _gentle _breathing was what he wished he could say, but the truth was she snored like a wriggling puppy, although she complained that he was the one who sometimes twitched in his sleep as though he was chasing rabbits.

Another sound added itself to the symphony on the morning air; he thought perhaps he had heard it before. It was maybe this that had woken him up, the wolves down in the courtyard, howling back and forth as though in conversation. They were chatty this morning; over the months he had learned to recognise their voices; Summer with his loud clear bark, almost like one of the dogs, Shaggydog, always more growling, gruff like he was himself. Shaggydog was his favourite; Sandor often came across him in the morning, asleep in Stranger's stall. Somehow, the horse who made friends with nobody but his master seemed to have found a kindred spirit in Shaggydog, and he would often see the wolf streaking along at their heels as he rode. Ghost was out there too, he knew, silent but listening; he would be talking too, but in his own way.

One morning not long before, they had come down to find Ghost back from beyond the wall, a sad and silent look in his ruby eyes. _I'm home, _it seemed to say, but sorrowful for his lost master. Tears had jumped in Sansa's eyes and she had dropped to her knees and hugged Ghost as though he were a child – _A wolf without a human, _she had said, more to the wolf than anyone else – _and I was a human without a wolf. _Ghost latched himself to her after that, true to his name always following close by her.

_Wolves within the walls of Winterfell, _he thought – it had taken some getting used to, but in truth, not that much. They were very like dogs to him and there was not a one of them disliked him.

And so he knew, hearing them this morning that something was different. It was not something bad; he knew that as well, their calls were more expectant, excited than they were of warning. They had become louder too, and Sansa stirred beside him. She yawned; she was never quick to really wake, she looked at him and smiled as she always did, and it never stopped making his heart sing to see. Then she frowned as he knew she would –

"The wolves –" she murmured and he nodded and, as if by mutual unspoken agreement they threw on some clothes and went down to the yard.

Hardly anybody was up at this hour, even with the noise the wolves were making. Only Arya and Rickon, in fact, and they looked at Sansa accusingly;

"We've been waiting for you for _ages,"_ Arya moaned.

"Can't you hear them?" Rickon added. A gentle rumble added voice to theirs and they all looked up to see Bran circling in the sky as though on the same errand.

Sandor looked from one sibling to another and suddenly felt out of place – _this is a Stark thing _he thought, for want of better articulation, and he got as far as saying as he started to back away –

"Maybe I should –" when Sansa and Arya each took hold of his arm, impatiently and almost in unison, to make him stay.

"You're a Stark now," Sansa said, as though reading his thoughts; and it was true enough he supposed, he had little attachment to his own name, and their children would be Starks- but it was Arya's hold on his arm that really convinced him maybe he should stay. Besides, a figure at the front gate called –

"What are you all standing around for?" and they made off, with the wolves leading, to go in the direction Osha was pointing.

Outside the castle wall they looked down, to one side the Queen's Road and to the other the field sloping down towards the forest. Mist still hung upon the morning, coiling across the grass and out from the trees beyond and so by the time they made out the figures coming up from the woods they were closer than expected. Summer set up a delighted barking first and he and Shaggydog almost leaped out to meet the newcomers, Ghost running like a gentle wind behind.

Out of the humans it was Arya who worked it out first, as the largest shape came into view;

"Nymeria!" she shrieked, loud and unrestrained, tears darting into her eyes as she ran the way of the wolves. Rickon kept close to Osha, and they kept a little behind, but the four of them followed down the meadow and when they reached the little group Arya was on the grass, damp seeping up her skirt, laughing and crying into the dire wolf's neck.

She was _huge, _this one, Sandor noticed, even bigger than the others, and yet she licked her little owner's face and neck like an excited puppy. There were tears sparkling in Sansa's eyes just watching them, but they were tears of joy. Her own wolf could never return to her, she knew, but it would never have made her sad to see Arya so happy. More happy even than the day Gendry had come to them to take up the blacksmith's role at Winterfell.

It seemed like an age and like no time at all, before Nymeria broke away from Arya, who was still sobbing in delight, to evaluate the rest of them. She licked Sansa's hand, nuzzled Rickon, greeted the massive dragon who had landed near them with a friendly bark and then sniffed the two strangers. She made a motion of the head that suggested she approved of Osha then came and sniffed at Sandor for the longest time.

"She doesn't like the smell of you either," Arya laughed through her tears. But then, as if in defiance of her mistresses words, Nymeria licked him exuberantly on the hand. He had never been so happy to be covered in drool and Arya regarded him for the first time with a look he had never expected to see from her.

And then, as though she were making an introduction, Nymeria trotted to the smaller shapes she had brought with her, that sat and wriggled clumsily in the grass. Six of them, just as she had been one of six, barely more than a few weeks old, squishy and clumsy on soft paws. She picked one of the littlest up decidedly by the scruff and deposited it gently and deliberately – everyone was sure – at Sansa's feet.

Sansa went to her knees in the grass then too, reaching out to the wolf pup gently, looking at the mother all the while as if to say _may I? _When she touched the soft fur the started to cry silently, it was happy and sad all at once and the pup all but leapt into her arms. When she stood up it came with her, nestling its head beneath her chin.

Nymeria stayed the rest of the day, conducting her visit as though she were a queen, not resting until she had met all the new inhabitants of Winterfell. When it came evening and she sloped away with silent goodbyes, Bran told them, through Gilly, that she would be back to visit often. She was wild now and would not live within the castle like the others did; only the little one she had given Sansa would stay and she would be back often to see them all.

Sansa did not let go of the pup all day and Sandor was reminded, fiercely, of the very first time he had seen her; a child walking with a great wolf, unafraid and free. She was unafraid again now, but a child no longer. He remembered back then how hard he had tried not to love her, but to see her now he wondered that he had ever bothered.

"You should call her Lady," Arya said that night at dinner, the pup sat between them on the bench, begging scraps from her mistress's hand. Sansa looked at her, dreamy and decided all at once –

"No –" she said steadily, in truth she had been thinking about this much of the day – "No, Lady _was. _And I won't replace her, it would be….rude. I thought I might call her Cat."

Arya snorted and laughed –

"You _can't _call a wolf _Cat."_

Sansa nodded, with all due respect to their mother she supposed she could not, not really.

"I'll call her Alayne then," she nodded, firmly, adding in a murmur for anyone who understood – "part of me – but different."

Sandor understood.

-x-

And now, in the clearing, with everyone who mattered nearby, all of the wolves came too, bounding upon them unaware of their size, the little ones thinking they were puppies still, leaping and rolling in a great licking tumble.

_Truly _Sandor thought – _the whole family, together again._

_x_

**I know, I know it's a happy ending but Jon Snow has died. I'm sorry, I can't fit ****_everyone _****in here, and – I know – I'm sorry – I don't really like him that much *holds up hands in advanced surrender!***

**I don't know if they'd re-name the King's Road if there was a Queen on the iron throne, but I figured they might so yeah, did that. :-)**


	10. Gendry

**10.**

**Gendry**

Just as he did right now, he often found himself the silent one in the midst of a rough and tumble of glorious chaos. People were used to it now; they had long since stopped asking him how he was. He hoped that meant that they realised he was good. He usually was these days.

He could understand. Quietness unnerved a lot of the people around him. Arya would never have it in her, and maybe that was why he did not push himself to add his voice to the chatter much of the time. She made enough noise for the both of them. Even the Queen, for all her serenity and self-possession, had a heart that chattered as loudly as her sister's. These Starks, they were passionate people, he had come to realise. He loved it about them, though for a long time he had thought it set him apart. That was before Sandor had started coming often to the forge just to sit with him, not talking for sometimes hours on end.

There was a deep stillness in him too, Gendry had realised. Something he would never have guessed of the man – or the hound that he had known only vaguely from King's Landing; and even less from the man he had seen fight Beric Dondarion. He never forgot a helmet and that had been the strangest he had ever helped to make. He had wondered what to say the first time Sandor had come to join him at work, sat just to one side, half watching him, half not. It had unnerved him at first; after a while he had asked how he could help. The man was after all, Lord of Winterfell now.

"Just reckoned you were someone a man could be still around," he had said, looking at Gendry carefully – "Am I wrong?"

Gendry had offered up a half smile; he supposed anyone else might have thought it a strange thing to say, but he understood silence well enough. Perhaps you came to more after hearing the clang of metal all day, he didn't know. Perhaps it was a tactic he had nurtured for survival; perhaps it was a peace in him that had never been too troubled by a need to know who he was. He had never known, nor expected to, and in teaching himself not to care he had worked out the truth of who he was younger than most. This man had come to it late, he knew, but when he had he had brought a stillness with it that permeated the air around them, the peace of the Quiet Isle lingering about the Blacksmith's forge at Winterfell. He had spoken of his time there on one of the days they had actually spoken.

It had been half Sandor's silence and half Arya's noise that had really combined to make Winterfell his home. He had always wanted a home, he supposed; though sometimes the exuberance of her insistence had made him frown.

"Stark and Baratheon together again!" she had said one day – "Father always said it was meant to be that way."

"I'm not a Baratheon," he had protested. She had disagreed, of course, she always did.

"What are you then?" she challenged.

"I'm a Waters."

"There's no need to sound so proud of it."

But he was. If he had ever been pressed to follow in his father's path he would not have taken it; smithing was his knighthood, just as baking was Hot Pie's.

That did not mean he could not smile at the irony of the name. It was the water that had nearly killed him. He had not had a clue how to man the little boat Davos had cast him off in and had floated out to sea until he thought that all was lost. He had no idea how many days he had passed out at sea, when he came to in the bunk of a larger ship, unsure who had him or where he was headed. Finally a woman had come down to him, her face was sweet but her eyes were crafty and twinkled with a clever light. Strangely it was those eyes that made him like her, for there was something in them that reminded him of Arya, so too in the way she laughed when he asked who captained the ship.

"Boy," she said, "_I _Captain this ship, and all the ships around us, we're headed on a course for Pyke to take back the Iron Islands- and who the fuck are you?"

He had told her the vaguest of truths, and it must have been enough, for he had not been killed or thrown overboard. Neither had he been set free and that, in truth, was fair enough, as he had no real idea of where he wanted to go. It took him the rest of the voyage to work it out and when he did, it was a person, not a place.

He remembered too well the mistake he had not had a chance to make, and the tears she had covered with anger when he told her he was staying.

_I can be your family _she had said. He had meant his reply as courtesy and something more he had not quite realised he felt until he said it, but he realised straight away that she had just taken it somehow as an insult.

_You'd be my lady._

He could not work out, on that long journey to Pyke, if she still would; all he knew-and it was a definite enough decision to let him know where he wanted to go-was that he had to find out. It was months before he got the chance to leave anyway. In the end Asha _did _take back the Iron Islands and one of her early tasks, as first Queen to sit the Sea Stone Chair, was to ask their not-quite-captive if he had _finally _decided where he wanted to go.

"Winterfell," he had replied, decidedly – "I want to go to Winterfell". She spat on the ground at that in amused scorn.

"Not much there," she said "I've seen it. What do you hope to find there?"

He thought a moment before shrugging and replying simply –

"My Lady".

Queen Asha rolled her eyes as though the reply bored her, and let him go with a shake of her head.

But he had not found Arya at Winterfell. He had found her before that. She had jumped him one night on the road, thinking he was a bandit or something. He had not recognised her at first either. Not until she had fought him to the ground and that sword of hers was at his throat and then –

"Gendry?" she scowled.

"Arya?"

"I thought you were a cut throat!"

"That's _your _sword at _my _throat."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was….looking for you actually."

"Why would I be here?"

"Well you are here, aren't you?"

"Yes but –"

"I was heading for Winterfell."

"So was I."

They looked at each other then and started to laugh. She sounded like she had not laughed in years and he was not sure he had either. He peered at her in the evening light, blinked, looked again and began to grow red between what he now saw and the fact that she was still straddling him. It seemed she became aware of it too because she suddenly went awkward, and scrambled up like a cat. Having turned into a woman in his absence had not made her any more elegant, though it was clear from the way she moved now that she had finally learned all the steps in that dance she had always gone on about.

On the road, and for weeks after their return to Winterfell, it was the only dance he would ask her to take with him and every day for half a year found them sparring in the yard and out in the fields. She beat him now every time, but it never stopped him asking her.

"A man's supposed to lead a dance," he huffed after she beat him for the hundredth time.

"You'll have to learn the ladies steps," she retorted. Her eyes were bright and golden in the sunlight and he wrestled her into the grass all the same. It was the last time they did so as children.

"You could marry me," he had suggested, shrugging it to her one day.

"You could marry me," she retorted, because everything with her had to be a challenge. Then she grinned – "You'd be my lady."

"Shut up." He threw blossoms at her and they never did marry. He was not sure they ever would and now, laughing with the others as she and her siblings rolled with the wolf cubs that could hardly be called cubs any more, it was the last thing in the world that could matter.

_x_

**Uff, I'm sorry it's been a bit of a wait for this one, I wasn't sure where I was going at first, and then other projects kept poking me. I'm thinking I'll do Brienne next but I need suggestions from yous for after that? :-)**


	11. Sansa3

**Sansa**

"You know, being queen makes it less easy for you to slip off unnoticed".

She smiled at the voice, not even slightly startled. It was impossible for someone so large and lumbering to approach silently. She liked it that way; she did not like to be surprised, not even good surprises. She found she took far more pleasure in knowing what was going to happen. Her ears buzzed in gentle happiness at his presence and for a moment she did not reply. Sandor, being Sandor, of course, had to take offence;

"I can go – if you wanted to be alone."

He was not actually as sore as it came out; he understood well enough- silence had settled into him over the years like warmth into a stone, and sometimes the press and clamour of people all around was too much for him, too.

"No," she said then, stepping back, finding his hand and taking it, still with her back to him. He knew her well enough to know that this was trust and not dismissal. Sansa faced threat head on, mask of calm in place, and sank backwards into comfort like a soft pillow. She showed her back like a small animal might show its belly – "I can be alone with you".

She had said that more than once before, he remembered, the first time not long after they were married. He had assumed then that this was a bad thing. He had realised since then there was nothing sweeter one could hear from their beloved.

It was not that she had been sad, far from it; or even that she was not enjoying having all her people around her. She was- indeed there was less that gladdened her heart more. But sometimes, just sometimes, when the noise was thickest, she felt the need for peace, just to go off and be alone and smile to herself at the pleasure of her life, her family, her world. It was what she had made it, and having learnt that she could be the creator of her own world, it never ceased to delight her that the one she had built up was so lovely. Sandor understood; he always did, without her ever having to say a word. He had taught her stillness, just as she had taught it to him so very long ago. Even in the midst of a happy ending they continued to fix themselves and each other in the constant symbiosis that was the bedrock of their marriage.

It seemed to Sansa, as she stood amongst the trees, that she was both alone and surrounded all at once. She could hear the shouts and laughs of the others roiling up on the breeze from the picnic site; she could even hear Jaime, who was starting to list a little into the tide of mead and beer, starting to lead the children in a rousing chorus of what should have been _The bear and the Maiden Fair _– but with somewhat more obscene lyrics of his own devising. She smiled to hear them and to still feel the crunch of leaves and twigs beneath her feet, to feel the breeze through the leaves and the sun dappling warmth onto her face. She felt part of everything today, her people and her world. She even thought she might be rather an important part, a thought requiring such confidence she rarely dared think it; but today she would.

Sandor leaned towards her ear then and she smiled widely in the knowledge that he was going to whisper something sweet. Actually what he said, in a very sweet whisper, was –

"Your sister's gone up a tree with your lemon cakes."

Sansa laughed; then she turned round, sat down on the ground, on the soft, dry moss and taking Sandor's hands, pulled him down beside her.

"I knew she would. I gave half to Hot Pie," she smiled – "Half the rest anyway, I ate so many already your little bird is going to become flightless if she's not careful. Are you quite sure your share of the mead is safe from Jaime?"

"Not even slightly."

"He's teaching the little ones rude songs, isn't he?"

"Apparently this is a brand new set of words he says his little brother invented – and when I say little –"

"Don't be _mean!"_

"Oh I know, why am I always so hateful?" Sandor rolled his eyes at her; he had never stopped reminding her of that – "Sorry little bird, didn't mean to slight your first husband, should I be jealous?"

"You shouldn't." She shrugged, he was just playing and so was she – "You will be. Anyway my _first _husband has re-married his _first _wife. You know that. He writes to Jaime often, that's the only reason I know. It's good that they're communicating again."

"You people," he shook his head – "Starks, Lannisters – you're all insane –"

"Mmm –" she pretended to agree – "Starks, Lannisters, _Cleganes –_ strange, strange people."

She lay back on the ground, stretched out and looked up through the leaves, blue and gold and brown and green all woven together above them in a fabric no hand could ever replicate. She wished she could make it into a dress and wear the sky and sunlight, but she couldn't and that was alright. She smiled to herself; it felt like letting her brain off the hook for a while to allow it to roam free into the realm of fanciful thought. She had not even noticed Sandor lie beside her or realised that her hand was in his. It was too right, too much a part of her for her to notice it.

"What are you staring it?" She smiled, sleepy in the sunlight, turning over to look at him in the leaves and twigs of the forest floor.

"You," he said and her eyes pricked at the words beneath it and she could not help but feel beautiful. He kissed her, almost innocently, fingers chasing the streaks of gold in her hair;

"You taste like lemon cakes," he said and for a moment it was sweet, until he added, with a glint in his eye –

"I don't like lemon cakes."

She squealed at that, sat up and tried to fight him; he was longer picking the leaves out of her hair than they ever spent in fighting.

"You _have _to like lemon cakes," she laughed, as he combed out her hair with his fingers – "_True _lemon cakes," she teased. Several minutes later they re-joined the rest of the group, Sansa still saying, for anyone to hear –

"You are not _allowed _to not like lemon cakes."

She giggled when a lemon cake fell onto Sandor from the branches of the tree beside them, almost as though in agreement with her point, and shouted a thank you to Arya up in the branches.

_x_

**("I've been waiting for a tree like this all my life! Sandor, you must ride forth every day and pick me the finest lemon cakes this tree has to offer!" He agrees, wearily and from every day onwards the children hide in the branches of a tree with plates of lemon cakes to make his gathering more fruitful.) My new headcanon!**

**So it started sweet, went a bit crack, can't be helped, I had trouble getting back into the zone to write this after crappy recent events on g.o.t. But I'm back, hello, have some happy Sansa to cheer yourselves up! Also, yes, Tyrion gets a happy ending too. :-)**


	12. Brienne

**Brienne**

Wolves and dragons and Jaime; it was a fantasy world she had never thought to live in. She had always, depressingly, assumed that there was no place for her in any world, least of all one where everything was right and good and as it should be. She supposed she had always had too strong an idea of what these things entailed for it ever to all come right.

But it had. If it had not been sealed before, it had been so on the day the Queen in the North gave her a knighthood. She could still remember the moment and the words of it as though it were minutes ago; she repeated them to herself every day and heard the new Queen's voice in her head _– a place by my hearth and meat and mead at my table _– she had spoken the words just like her mother had, pledging as Lady Catelyn had pledged it, by the old gods and the new. She had looked so like her mother then that Brienne had been afraid she might cry; her eyes had stung, even as she felt so radiantly buoyed up upon her oath and this honour she had dreamed of so often but never truly expected might be hers.

But there had been a thousand times and more in her life that she had wanted to cry and had to hold it back. She was good at that, almost as good as everything else she had trained herself to be good in. She had managed to keep her dignity in that wonderful moment and Lady Sansa had smiled at her like she understood. It was that smile that made her different from Catelyn; almost playful, despite all her worries and cares, as though they were sharing a secret. Indeed Sansa had told her later she was at least as proud to have bestowed this knighthood as Brienne was to receive it. They were both glad at the precedent it had set and could not help but smile to see more and more young women setting out upon the path to knighthood. It had seemed the last she could to in repayment was to set about schooling the queen's sister along that path, undoing all she could of the strange things she had learned in Braavos and teaching her all the old ways of honour and courage. Arya was a slow learner but a satisfying one who always got there in the end.

They had all argued for a long time over whether or not she could be called a _ser. _It had seemed like an obvious yes to Sansa and a _no _to Jaime; they had almost become quite heated about it. In the end it was Pod who cleared it up for them the day after the whole debate when he addressed her for the first time, with perfect clarity, as _Ser _and nothing else. She had been uncertain herself, as many of them had, but Pod's simple assurance made it clear to all of them and all argument was left well behind.

In truth she had been given the option of a knighthood long before she took it. But the first offer had come from Jaime and so she had not taken it. It was _not _just stubbornness, as he insisted it was to this day. It had just been too strange at first. She had nearly _killed _Jaime. She still did not know what would have happened if Beric Dondarion had not unexpectedly risen up and killed the thing Lady Catelyn had become even as she and Jaime fought in that wretched cavern. He was undoing the wrong they had done in bringing her back, Lord Beric said; she could only assume it was the fact that she could barely see to try and kill Jaime through the tears in her eyes that had convinced him of the wrong they were doing. She still had nightmares about those days, though they were mercifully becoming less and less each year.

She had expected Jaime never to forgive her, had been so convinced of it that she had made herself sullen and angry about it, almost mean to him before he could say anything. But they had been going to kill Pod if she had not brought him there- he could see her argument before she ever made it. He often could; it was a large part of cycle their marriage survived upon – foreseeing one another's arguments, understanding them and yelling at each other nonetheless.

_Marriage. _That was something she could have never foreseen. Not only because Jaime was so far superior to her, but because she did not like him anyway. It was the conundrum on which they continued to work – the assumption of her disliking him and him being unable to stand her right back – an assumption that had become a joke long before either of them realised it themselves. Indeed it seemed, the only people who had been surprised when they announced their intentions at Winterfell were the two of them who were announcing it. Sansa had smiled as though she had just won a bet – in fact, Brienne was fairly sure she saw Arya slip her five dragons. Sandor had grinned, announcing that it was about bloody time, a sentiment that was then echoed by a hall full of their friends. She was not sure she had ever heard Pod cheer so loudly.

They had travelled together out of habit at first; not realising until after they had helped the Starks take back Winterfell that separating seemed more terrible than they would like to admit. She remembered the conversation well;

"So this is where we say goodbye," Jaime had said; she was never as good at reading people as she would have liked, but she could not help but think that he was trying a little too hard to sound light and as though he could not care less.

"I suppose it is," she had replied, deadpan.

"Where will you go from here?" he asked, then answered himself before she had a chance – "Back to Tarth I suppose".

"And you –" she neither confirmed nor denied it – "To Casterly Rock?"

"It would make sense." He looked down at his reins steadily.

Then had followed the most awkward silence either of them had ever inhabited; she was only glad they were both on horses so they did not have to do the dance of whether or not to hug.

"Goodbye then –" she inclined her head a little and then smiled, for old time's sake – "Kingslayer!"

"Wench!" he rolled his eyes – "If I never see you again it'll be too soon."

The jibe hung flatly in the air.

"So," she said, staring at him.

"So," he echoed. For an overly long moment neither of them moved and eventually she turned her horse and started off out of embarrassment, heart sinking. She had not gone ten metres before Jaime called out a tired, deep breathed –

"Wait!"

She turned back around too quickly in her relief.

"You know," Jaime said, as though he had only just thought of it – "My Aunt Genna can have Casterly Rock, it would be too strange back there now – I don't think – you know –"

She watched him scratch his head as he fumbled for the thing to say, just for a minute, before helping out;

"I'm done with Tarth," she shrugged – "I think I was done a long time ago."

"The Rock's too big," Jaime nodded – "I was thinking somewhere smaller – just for one – you know –"

"Or two –" she supplied as though she could not care less.

"Two – yes – I could do that. So I thought maybe – remember on the way up here we found that keep, just north of Torrhen's Square and you said you could happily live out forever in a place like that?"

"It was you that said that."

"I did _not."_

"You did."

"Shut up woman! But you know we could – I mean – I know it's not what either of us ever planned but it could be –"

"It could be a life," she finished.

The wind whipped up from the woods just then and the smell of spring was a bird flying in on the last on the chill winter wind, and Brienne who had never been tactile in her life reached over to take hold of Jaime's hand. She smiled at him and he scowled back –

"Wrong hand," he whispered pointedly. She looked down, went red, rode around the other side of him to take the right one.

"We could be-" she began. But she was not sure exactly what it was they would be and broke off, realising that the sentence was alright on its own; They _could _just be.

"No kissing though," Jaime scowled and smiled all at once, afraid of this tenderness and the surprising chance for happiness that was so unlike anything either of them had grown up to expecting. Brienne made a face;

"Like I'd want to kiss _you."_

"Oh what are you – twelve?"

"You started it."

"Maybe, but _you _were all _ewww _about it."

They were still holding hands, still bickering happily as they rode off into their sunset.

-x-

Brienne saw Sansa and Sandor coming back out of the trees to join them; she never ceased to be surprised at how beautiful they looked together. It was nothing to do with the way either of them looked, it was the bubble that seemed to surround them all, a faint shimmery film between them and the rest of the world, inside of which they were inviolable. They always made her smile.

She would never be like that- she and Jaime would never be like that; they would never gaze into each other's eyes and make the children pretend to gag from cuteness. If they looked too long into each other's faces they started yelling _urrrghh _at each other as though they were children themselves. It wasn't the same kind of perfect as Sansa and Sandor had, it was a different perfect all of its own.

She held her happiness close inside, wrapped around it like around a soft cushion. She wondered how she only ever let it show in such a mild smile when inside she was singing and ringing with it like a bell; a bell she knew only Jaime could hear. It was more than enough.

_x_

**So, I started writing this ages and ages ago – then series 5 started getting me down then my parents were with me for a week, I'm sorry it took so long but here it finally is!**

**On a quick side note I don't head canon Brienne as a "She" particularly, I entirely think that if she was living in today's society she'd use "they" pronouns, but since they don't have that option in Westeros I've gone with "she" same as in the books. I'm willing to take suggestions on how I could do this better though. :-)**


	13. The Queen in the North

**I know this is a happy fic but I should probably put a trigger warning in here for Jeyne Poole's story line – just because to get her a happy ending I've obviously had to deal with the aftermath of what happened to her. Absolutely nothing graphic just references.**

**The Queen in the North**

A casual chorus of cheers came up as they re-emerged from the trees, and a few ripe suggestions were thrown out as to what they had been up to. Sandor squeezed her hand and broke off towards the ale barrels, and her wolves came bounding up to take his place. Ghost pushed his head beneath her right hand and Alayne, who emulated him in everything, did the same on Sansa's left. As she walked slowly towards the party with a hand on the head of each wolf somebody called out a joyous toast, glass in hand –

"The Queen in the North!"

Somebody else took it up and just like that the early afternoon burst into a chorus of shouts and celebrations. Arya shouted something that was not quite _The Queen in the North, _but she supposed that from Arya the insult was as good as a toast.

She remembered. She supposed it was a large part of her duty to remember. She remembered the day she had known she was going to have to take the title; that Protector of the Vale and Lady of the Eyrie was not enough, as she had thought back then that it might be.

It was a freezing cold winter evening and she had sat alone as she often did. Everyone was lost to her, she had thought; her family, friends, Sweetrobin and Harry killed by Littlefinger and even he was gone now and at her doing. For that at least she supposed she deserved the loneliness, though if truth were told she did not wholly hate it.

She had got word earlier that day about the two fugitives from the north who sought sanctuary in the Eyrie. Fugitives from _Winterfell. _She did not understand; did not see how Winterfell could ever be somewhere anyone would need to escape. She realised for the first time, how little she knew of all that was happening in the rest of the world.

She still did not know them when they were brought before her. The girl was a tiny thing, all but hidden in her cloak, still shivering from the long climb, and the man – she had never seen someone whose eyes were so _old. _It took her several moments looking at him, aware of some recognition, imagining what he would look like if he were younger before she saw it;

"Theon," she said, she could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. He faltered and failed in his already poor effort to meet her eye.

"I don't want to see him now," she told Ser Lothor, who stood near her, ever faithful. He led Theon out, not harshly. Alayne turned to the girl, knelt in front of her and gently pushed back her hood. Her eyes widened; so did the girl's –

"Jeyne?" She asked, it was hard to believe it. A look crossed Jeyne's face that wanted to be happiness but came out as disbelief –

"Sansa?" She was delighted and devastated all at once, her friend restored but looking so different - even so the two girls flew together in a crushing hug. Sansa cried from a half dozen different emotions at once – but Jeyne; it was like she had forgotten how to cry, or she was used up with no more tears left in her. Eventually Jeyne winced and she pulled away but they stayed kneeling on the floor, hands clasped, staring at each other. Jeyne reached out and touched Sansa's hair timidly; she made a sound that was almost a little laugh –

"I almost didn't know you," she said; her voice was a whisper, like she had grown afraid to really speak – "You're still so beautiful".

Sansa's heart hurt her, looking at her friend she knew she could not say the same back and Jeyne would not believe her if she tried. It felt like a lifetime ago that she had last seen her; the two of them huddled together in Maegor's holdfast whilst Jeyne wept for her father. Gods, but it had been so long ago; not long before that they had giggled on the castle steps over stolen strawberry tart.

As the evening wore on and Sansa found Jeyne better clothes, made her warm and dry and found them both food, Jeyne told Sansa everything that had happened since the last time they had been together. Sansa fought hard – and succeeded- to stop herself from crying. She did not want to make anything worse for her friend; not after that.

"Jeyne –" she said, chin quivering but dry eyed, clasping her friend's hands so as not to hurt her with her hugs – "I'm so, so sorry".

"It's not your fault," Jeyne said and she meant it, but just as she said it Sansa realised with a terrible stab that it _was. _When Cersei had sent for her that night she wrote the letters, she had unthinkingly let it slip that Jeyne was with her; worse, she had let them know that Jeyne was the reason she had any idea what was going on in the wake of her father's capture and – it occurred to her now – Jeyne's own father's death. She remembered The Queen telling her Jeyne would be safe with Lord Baelish from now on, and in her memory Littlefinger loomed over Cersei's shoulder, a dark shadow running his evil schemes and plans for Jeyne between his fingers.

It _was _her fault, but she could not say that to Jeyne and Jeyne would not believe her anyway; her friend was too good, better than she was. She found something else true to say –

"I wish none of this had happened – I – if it could have been me instead of you I wish I could have spared you that. It _should _have been me – I –" she could not say the reason she was thinking – "You're better than me and - I'm a Stark. You should not have suffered for my family's mistakes."

"Don't say that –" Jeyne looked almost frightened – "Better than you – no – I – you would have done it all differently. I wish –well – I always wished I was more like you."

Now Sansa did start to cry; it was almost a relief – being with Jeyne – they had always been able to cry with each other. Just for this once, she could be a child again; just be Sansa again and nobody else.

"Don't," she sniffed – "Don't wish that – I'm –" she realised Jeyne did not want her to hear her say how awful she was, what a terrible person she felt herself to be – how dare she wallow in such self-pity after everything her friend had survived?

"I've made so many mistakes," she finished lamely.

But Jeyne would not hear her. They huddled by the fire together, eating the last of the winter's lemon cakes, and Jeyne asked Sansa all about her own life since the last time they had seen each other. Sansa told it; she left out a lot – she left out Joffrey and the beatings and abuse – Jeyne needed no repeat of a story with so many similarities to her own. And she left out Sweetrobin and his death and the fact that she had killed Littlefinger.

But she did tell Jeyne of Littlefinger's death; how he had fallen from the moon, door at least. Jeyne liked that part and nodded more firmly than Sansa had yet seen.

"Good," she had said of his death, her eyes flinty for a moment, reminding Sansa of the north and the home that she missed. Later, as Sansa told her more, Jeyne's eyes filled with tears for the first time –

"You've been through so much –" she whispered – "I'm so –"

"Jeyne " Sansa said, aghast – "_You _can't say that to me – not when you've –"

Jeyne shook her head softly, her eyes large, almost smiling;

"You can't compare, Sansa," she said "Suffering and such things – we're all too different, it's not a thing you can compare." Sansa looked at her friend in admiration and wondered if she would ever be so wise or so sweet.

After that they talked about happier things.

Sansa told Jeyne stories made up out of bits of her life, things to make them smile, of building snow castles in the Eyrie and preserving lemons in the snow. She told her stories to make her grin like they had when they were children. She remembered how they had whispered about boys and kisses and – though it was never quite what they had whispered about she found herself telling Jeyne about Sandor Clegane and the night of the Blackwater; of a kiss and a song beneath a burning green sky and the cloak he had left her.

"Like a wedding vow," Jeyne said, and though she did not giggle any more she smiled and Sansa could not say she had not thought of that herself.

They talked through the night; wrapped in one cloak like sisters as the fire died down and it was Sansa's joy to see Jeyne emerge more and more from the shell of herself until she could almost recognise her friend again.

"And Sansa," Jeyne said seriously, as the grey light of dawn came through the window – "You have to forgive Theon –" she back pedalled hard, frightened herself by daring to say Sansa _had _to do anything – "I just – he really did rescue me – he was brave and – and – he suffered so much – you don't know Ramsay, Sansa – he –" Jeyne began to shake as soon as she had said the name and could barely get the rest out – "He's a monster" she whispered. And Sansa remembered a conversation in a garden of gold roses and she understood Jeyne's fear like it was her own. But Theon –

"He killed Bran and Rickon," she said, lips set hard.

"No –" Jeyne's eyes widened – she had only just realised that Sansa did not know – "No he told me – he – we – I mean on the way here – we talked and – they were two boys – but they weren't Bran and Rickon – he just wanted us to think they were. It was awful – and he knows that – he really does but Sansa –" this time Jeyne clasped her hands, eyes shining with the news – "Bran and Rickon are still alive! I mean I _know _Rickon is – somebody overheard someone at Winterfell say he was at White Harbour with Manderley's people – something like that, and Bran I don't know but – those people, they want to see one of you back at Winterfell – there –" Jeyne faltered, lost for breath; it had been so long since she had said so much or been so excited. Sansa finished for her;

"There must always be a Stark in Winterfell." She nodded, stretched, stood up, pulling Jeyne up with her –

"I know what I have to do".

It was then and there that she had decided; she would take back the north for her family, so many of whom still lived after all, she would do it for the north who would rally behind her, she would do it for everyone they had lost and in truth, more than anything – she would do it for Jeyne. Jeyne who remained so wise and so courageous after all she had faced. She would do it for all of them, because they all deserved better.

She _had _forgiven Theon, and she had not taken either of them with her to Winterfell. Neither could face it and she was not going to push that. They had stayed out the winter in the Vale and now still wrote to her often from the Iron islands where they had gone to be alone together away from the rest of everything.

-x-

Sansa laughed beneath the chorus of cheers and roughly nuzzled the wolves as she sat back down in the clearing. She had never imagined back then how sweet and lovely her life might be, even less imagine all that she was capable of. She laughed again as Bran flew low overhead with Rickon clinging to his feet. _Queen in the North _she thought, with something like pride – now that it was true there were times – times like this – when she could just about imagine it.

_x_

**So I've been planning this chapter for about a week since the idea of a Jeyne/ Sansa reunion scene came to me. I hope I've made it clear what different people they are and why D&amp;D treating them as interchangeable is inexcusable and yeah for sure I may have ground my axe a bit in this chapter over some of the issues with this plotline in season 5! Also I feel Jeyne's been largely ignored/ treated shabbily in fanfic so I wanted to redress that a bit! **

**Next chapter: More hot dragon action, I'm thinking probably Gilly needs a pov chapter! :-D**


	14. Gilly

**Gilly**

"Bran!" Gilly called up to him, laughing because Rickon was shouting "Wheeeee!" as they flew, at the same time as yelling at his brother to put him down – "Bran, you put your brother down!" she called. Bran growled back and she laughed in a mixture of amusement and alarm – "No, no, no Bran, don't visit the woods!"

Gilly was quick to alarm, quick to worry, even now that she was happy and secure. Even security could worry Gilly; it felt so unnatural to her, even after all these years. Sam said she was like a frightened deer; a girl transformed into a doe by magic, a spell that could only be broken when somebody looked at her and knew straight away who she was. She loved those stories, though she shook her head at the idea of herself as the heroine of one – although being rescued by having somebody know her at first glance – that she could understand. It had been very like that for her.

There was a time when she had thought that she was broken for having any kind of idea of who she was. But she had. She had always had a desperate little flame of a thought that she was somebody beyond Craster's property. None of the others seemed to feel this, or if they did they kept it down. They made her keep it down too, and she had thought at the time they were being mean and harsh; but she knew now that they were just trying to help her. She sometimes wished she missed her sisters more, but she did not.

It had not occurred to her that she was strong. When she first escaped with Sam, she had put all of their success down to him. She had thought that she latched on to him because he was so much better than her and had laughed it away when he told her he had been in awe of her, thinking _she _was so much better than him. In the end she had realised – and she taught him to know it too – that their relationship did not thrive on being in persistent awe of one another, but in the realisation that they were in many ways equal. There were things she did better and things he did better and they taught one another and learned.

She had thought at first that Sam would do, that she was in both debt and awe to him because he rescued her; eventually she had realised it was very far from just that – that what kept her delighted in him was nothing less than him _himself, _a far better thing, she realised, than what he had done for her.

She remembered one of those early conversations, the ones where realisation came to her, so well. It was one of the early – though not the first time she had brushed off his suggestion that she was strong; in many ways stronger than he was.

"You're a slayer though," she said – "I'm just a – a gillyflower!"

"No, but flowers _are_ strong though!" Sam had argued straight back as though it should be obvious. He always did that and sometimes it irritated her and at other times, like this, it was sweet. She laughed.

"I mean it though!" he went on, in that earnest little boy manner she found more endearing than anything else about him – "Flowers are hardy and – and persistent, you can plant just the littlest bulb and soon there's a whole wall just covered in blooms! And – with enough time they can eat the wall away – you see the flowers last longer than stone in the end and that's – that's you, strong and powerful as a weed –"

"A weed?" She laughed; she had not known – until Sam – that she had the power to tease, that she could pretend to be affronted to make him be sweet. He blushed so red she almost regretted it.

"I meant it as a – as a good thing".

"I know," she smiled, taking pity on him.

She remembered how sad he had been when he told her they would never be able to marry; how sorry he was that as a Maester he could not. She had struggled to see why this was anything he should be sorry about. She had been _married _to Craster; it was the only example of marriage she knew, and as such she could not see why it was something she should want. Better just to be as they were now, and nobody said anything about it, or nothing bad anyway. That was good.

She had spent the early days and weeks at Winterfell alternately in awe at its size and structure and frightened and suspicious of it. Sam told her stories, and in them she saw herself in roles she never could have imagined. Some days she would panic; she would hear the sky calling her, drawing her back over the wall – "This place is not for wildlings! Not for me, not for free folk!" she would cry, half way towards leaving before the Weirwood called her back, the warm stone and the smell of books.

In the end three people had helped her to stay; to find her place in this place and herself within it. The first, of course, was Sam; he showed her how things worked and in return she found herself helping him – it helped her more to help him than to be helped.

The second was Shireen. Again she found herself helping the girl to find her place here; in return Shireen finished the reading lessons she had started what felt like so long ago. She did not quite understand it – not just at first but for the longest time. She half thought herself some kind of witch to be able to make sense of all those shapes. She liked that though; herself as magic, it felt right and tingly and powerful. The first time she read a full story and pictured it in her head she had felt like she could fly –

"It's like magic!" she said – "It's – it's freedom!" She had smiled apologetically because that was silly; Craster had talked so much about freedom but had so little time for books. But Shireen just smiled as though she had gone her whole life thinking herself the only one who understood.

"Freedom," she echoed – "Yes". She nodded. There was a story there too; Gilly could see it; One that Shireen would tell her when it felt like the right time. She began to see that there were stories everywhere, within all the disparate people who came to Winterfell in those early months and knitted themselves together like a garment. More than anything she saw a group of girls and women, women from everywhere bearing the stories of how they found freedom, clinging to images and tales of what each freedom meant. She grew to know too that what she saw in the people around her was select and that everyone saw everyone else differently. They held their new found selves and their new freedoms like scraps of fabric, all different colours and textures. Hers was made of words, though she knew she had so many more to learn. She began to gather more and more an idea that one day she would have enough to write down their collective story and in so doing stitch all those beautiful colours together.

She was learning to know what freedom meant; she was getting such a grip on it she had not realised there was more to learn. Not until she met Bran. She had not been afraid, not for a moment. Many of them were and she wondered if that made her deficient in some way. But when she saw him for the first time in the sky she saw a colour of freedom she had not known existed. She had known from the very beginning she would ride him and she would have no difficulty. All those days and nights beyond the way with nowhere to look but up; gazing at the clouds and the stars and wondering what stuff they were made of. Now she would know; now she would touch them.

She did not heed a word of Sam's advice – his concern in this matter. This was a sort of freedom to – to not heed someone and know they would still love you.

Reading had felt to her something as strange and wonderful as flying. Flying was as natural as breathing. Gilly held her arms out to the wind, screamed into the sky on Bran's back as the wind hugged her right back, whipping in her hair and streaming cold and fresh right through her bones. She could do this. She could do anything. She was the most important person in all the seven kingdoms. She yelled and laughed into the wind and sun, closer to them than the birds were. There was gold in her hair when the sun touched it up high like this; she had never known that. Knowledge was wonderful. She felt as though she were in possession of the most powerful secret in all the world; let the silver girl on the Iron Throne keep it; the wildling girl had a power so much greater.

_x_

She laughed at herself as much as she laughed at Bran – to hear herself talk with a dragon – she never got used to it, not ever. When he came down low enough she swung onto his back like she was water running uphill. She supposed there was so much she could begin to learn from talking with dragons, though for now she was content to _just _fly. Maybe one day she would write a book about that too.

_x_

**I love Gilly, She's a powerful little flower. I might give Shireen a chapter next what do people think? Giving her a happy ending seems apt right now yes? :-)**


	15. Shireen

**Okay so this chapter massively goes against canon because if I was going to get Shireen alive and well to Winterfell it would have to! But here goes!**

**Shireen**

It made her smile to herself now to remember how frightened she had been when she first came here. She wondered if frightened was the wrong word – it made it sound as though coming to Winterfell had been bad and it wasn't bad at all. _Frightened _sounded ungrateful, maybe it was more apprehension that she had felt, but what was apprehension if not a kind of frightened? She did not mean any offence to the people here – people she had come to love more early perhaps than the family she had grown up with - by thinking it and so it had to be alright to think it. Call things what they are, she had heard her father say in that distant past – and she did. Sometimes it was hard to find the exact word for the thing and she feared that however much she read she would not discover nearly as many as she needed – but it was a problem that was easily fixed by reading more and more every day, and talking to people. That was newer but, she was discovering, no less educational. Everyone had such a different frame of reference and the word was bigger than she had ever imagined it being all those years on Dragonstone.

Still she did agonise in her search for the right words, agonising sometimes the way her father had done over grammar. It was, as far as she could find, one of the only points in common they had had.

Coming from that world, the world of King Stannis and the red woman, of her still more distant mother, and her one friend the fool – coming from that strange hot circle into this one had shocked her into that sense of being frightened. It had been so much to take in. So much change, so many people, she had thought she would find herself dumb and silent and scared, that she would never be able to navigate the waters of so much interaction without drowning.

She might have floundered too, in all truth, but like Gilly there had been three important people who drew her into the very heart of her new family.

The first had been Ser Sandor. She remembered her first morning in Winterfell, how kind everyone had been, but he had not spoken to her at all. She had almost been afraid of him, but she knew it was a silly kind of fear – growing up she had heard tales of The Mountain and The Hound; terror tales to frighten children into doing as they were told. And here was this story in the flesh, sat across the table from her, all but ignoring her and occasionally throwing early morning grouchiness across the table at the queen's sister.

She was still watching him with curious interest when everyone else at the table began to disperse. She had not meant it to be awkward but it must have been because he broke the silence –

"You're staring, girl."

Of course she looked away;

"I'm sorry, I –"

"I remember a little girl like you – couldn't stop staring, then couldn't stop _not _staring – proper little pest she was with that."

"What happened to her?" Shireen's eyes went wide; she had heard the Cleganes killed children.

"I married her," Sandor grunted, vaguely amusing himself and half smiling.

"You can't marry me then," Shireen said, logically.

"No."

"I had greyscale when I was little," she said, suddenly – it was, she realised, the perfect alternative to asking him the next obvious question – "They thought I would die – I think most of them wanted me to die – but my father – he was determined I wouldn't, so I didn't."

Sandor grunted –

"My father –" he said, surprising himself, she could see – "My family – they just covered up what happened, it wasn't an accident you see, not an illness – my brother did it – I think they would have liked everyone to forget that. To forget I was there."

"My mother wanted to forget I was there," Shireen nodded; it was not self-pity, just a kind of understanding – "I – I didn't go out much."

Later Sandor would learn what an understatement that was.

They did not have the rest of what that conversation could have been, it seemed they did not need to – the part where he observed how strange this must be for her – being in an open and friendly place like Winterfell, a place as much at the heart of everything as Dragonstone had been cut off from it. The part where she acknowledged how different it all was, through which she started to become used to it. It was all expressed without a single word. She was glad for the non – sentimental affection Sandor showed her after that; she was used to that kind of awkward, distant fondness, like she remembered of her father, and a fierce protectiveness that reminded her sweetly of Ser Davos and helped her to miss him less. She could not feel sadness for his absence because she knew he was happy back at home, after all this time with his own family, but she had missed him nonetheless. He wrote her letters sometimes and she felt proud like parent every time she saw one of those oh – so carefully written missives.

Teaching others had become a tradition of Shireen's. And just as she had helped Gilly to find her place in Winterfell, Gilly had helped Shireen in being there for her to help. The reading lessons took her back to Dragonstone whilst at the same time getting her used to being here, and acclimatising the wildling girl to a strange new place helped Shireen to settle herself in more than just trying to do so for herself could ever have done. As the Queen's children and Gilly's too grew up Shireen found herself with more and more people to pass on her knowledge to and between her and Sam they formed all of the new educational system in Winterfell.

And finally, it was discovering she had family of her own blood here that really fixed her new home as home. She could not remember who it was who had clumsily announced over breakfast one morning that Gendry of course was her cousin. It was the morning after he had shown up with Arya. Shireen had simply been surprised but Gendry had looked shocked and quietly left the room. Later, when somebody had explained it to her more clearly she went down to the old forge to find him.

The forge had been left all but untended ever since Mikken had resided over it and when Shireen came down, Gendry was stood in the midst of the mess scratching his head and clearly wondering where he could even start. He did not give her much of an acknowledgement and she did not demand one, just sat down on a sturdy box in quiet companionship. Shireen was good at quiet and could sense immediately that it was natural to Gendry too. The forge was so long unused that there was a hole in the ceiling, one of the walls was half fallen in and what salvageable equipment there was, was in such disarray that Gendry was soon sighing deeply in audible distress. It was then that Shireen judged the silence to be already compromised to hazard a suggestion –

"If you start to fix the wall and ceiling first, everything else can come after," she said; having observed it all as hard as he had – "You can't start to do anything with all this stuff if the rain keeps getting in."

He turned to her, grinned wryly and said not unkindly –

"You an expert?"

"I grew up on Dragonstone," she pronounced – "I know about rain and damp and all sorts getting through the walls."

He smiled then;

"You've the right of it anyway –" he paused – "You were on Dragonstone?"

"Until just last year. Then we came to the Wall and then –" she did not want to think about the snow storm and the red woman and her father dying – "Then here."

"I saw Dragonstone once," he said – "Never saw you. But then –" he frowned.

"It's not a nice story?"

"There was this woman. A terrible woman, all – _red _she was – she wanted to kill me –"

Shireen could not help a little – "Oh!" that escaped her. Gendry gave her a half glance and went on.

"But someone rescued me. A knight. He put me in a boat and pointed me to safety – Ser Davos his name was – what's so funny?"

Shireen had not meant to be rude but she had started to laugh a little.

"I'm sorry –" she said, thinking of the story she had been too afraid to tell – "I'm sorry – you see – she wanted to kill me too – the red woman. We got caught in a snow storm between here and the wall and she wanted to burn me –" she shuddered, remembering.

"Yeah that sounds like her," Gendry nodded.

"But my father wouldn't let her. He – he died in the siege of Winterfell – but he put her off long enough so that my friend could rescue me and bring me here – my friend Ser Davos."

Gendry saw what she had found so funny and chuckled briefly in reply.

"I'm glad you found your way here."

"Yeah," he agreed – "Me too. Rowing forever I was. Felt like it anyway. I don't think it occurred to our friend that anyone might not be used to boats. If I hadn't been found –" he shuddered – "I'd still be rowing now –" he grinned at her. "Roof first you reckon then?"

In the weeks that followed Gendry rebuilt the forge, and it was largely under the guidance of his young cousin that the work all went out as smoothly as it did. And, though it seemed too strange for either of them to actually call each other cousin, Shireen would quite often be found reading or just sitting in a quiet corner of the forge keeping a pleasant company with the last left of her line.

-x-

This then, Shireen thought - as she watched the younger children and Arya fighting in the grass with their wolves – was family as she had never known it could be. Certainly, she was not related to most of them and they came from such different paths in life as set her head to spinning. But they were warm and loud and unafraid and it was a wondrous life that carried her along with it now and she was happy to float along on it as it carried her into summer. She looked around at all the faces that had become dear to her – Ser Jaime and Ser Brienne more than a little weathered by ale and bickering happily beneath a tree, Hot Pie, offering her the last of the sponge cake as he started to pack up the picnic. The Queen and Ser Sandor were talking with Sam about starting to head back to the castle to start preparations. Jaime's brother Tyrion was visiting and Sansa's friend Jeyne and some other people she could not quite picture and there was to be a huge feast such as they had not seen in Winterfell since the last days of the long summer. A huge part of Shireen wanted to categorise it all, everyone and everything she saw, to write it down and capture it so none of it could ever be lost.

But most of all she was happy just to live it.

_x_

**Two months! I am sooo sorry! Who thought I'd given up? :-) Okay though you see I had been planning to write Shireen soon, got it in my head, but that was all before I watched the end of season five. Then I saw that travesty and, obviously it messed shit well up for my little Shireen and I found it nearly impossible to pick up from that. But finally I figured this is a fantasy! If I want Shireen to be alive in it she damn well can be! So here, here is the resurrected Shireen, alive and well and F**k you D&amp;D! And yeah I'm childish but I had to get in a wee reference to Gendry still rowing!**

**So who to do next?**


	16. Jaime 2

**Been `having a lot of Cersei feels lately, but obviously I killed her so I can't write her, so I've done a Jaime chapter instead. It's Jaime/ Brienne but also past Jaime/ Cersei so if anyone hates that – this isn't graphic but it's there. :-)**

**Jaime**

It was blissfully warm in the afternoon sun and Brienne had blessedly pissed off to bother somebody else. Jaime stretched beneath his tree and yawned. It was a good tree and did not have any of the wretched children in it. There had been good mead that day and it had made him sleepy and, it occurred to him, if he did just give in to that and fall asleep right now Sandor would have to start packing everything away on his own. It was a shame. Jaime fell asleep in the sun beneath the tree.

In the dream he was still warm, still gently inebriated. In truth it was more a memory than a dream, but it was a memory tinged with the rose and gold delightfulness of dreaming. It was the kind of memory that after the event you pack away and store for later, to take out and dust down, press out the creases like a favourite dress and delight in it all over again. He was fairly sure that Cersei had said almost exactly that once.

In the dream they had been – what? - thirteen perhaps. It was summer and they had travelled somewhere without all the bad things that tainted so much of their childhood, without their father most of all, and without Tyrion hurrying along behind them which never bothered Jaime but drove Cersei to almost pantomime levels of irritation.

So they were somewhere, almost unchecked, after a party they had not been allowed to stay too late at. They had not really minded; they had been sent to their room with the sounds of revelry still going on downstairs and easily made their own fun. He could not quite remember now how they had got away with that one room, but they had and it was a gift from the gods if he had believed in them.

When all the sounds had died down they had slipped giggling downstairs and into the great hall.

"Why are we doing this again?" he had asked, to which she had responded with a raise of the eyebrows, picking up an almost full glass of some pungently strong red wine, raising it with a grin and drinking it too fast. She drained it in fact, banged it on the table like a man and looked at him for a moment ablaze with triumph and challenge and promptly doubled over coughing and almost retching. He had not stopped laughing at her when she straightened herself up, glaring at him as he creased over with laughter at her, finding that her withering glare only made it funnier.

"Well I should think so!" he said eventually – "You never drank more than a sip before, what did you think would happen?"

"I know what I think will happen _now" _she replied, menacingly, picking up the glass she had slammed down and filling it from the half full flagon on the table.

"Don't you dare" she raised it with the gleam back in her eyes. He took a step towards her, falling right into her trap; she threw the wine straight in his face.

"Right" he had chased her round the hall with a cup of his own and when he threw it he missed. She had jumped on the table as though she meant to dance on it and drained her second glass, bowing when she was through as though to an imaginary audience.

"You're mad!"

"Yes!" she jumped down from the table – "It runs in the family."

"We're not Targaryens!"

"No –" she jumped into his space, steadying herself with a hand on his arm, cupping his face with her other hand, not half as unsteady as she could have been, considering – "But we should have been" she added sadly and she kissed him.

He remembered it as though it had been his first real taste of wine, and though he was sure afterwards that it could not have been when he thought about that first taste it was always her that he thought of. It summarised her perfectly he had thought later – that she should have been his first inebriation – delightful and compelling and utterly utterly terrible for him. Still it was an addiction it had taken him half a lifetime to get over.

That night, he could not half imagined he would ever get over it, or ever want to. They had crept back upstairs, staggeringly drunk, constantly making more noise in hushing each other than they had ever been making to start with. In the bedroom she had demanded they switch clothes, slurring demandingly that he give her his first.

"I will not!"

"You will so!"

"They're mine!"

"Oh come on baby brother just give me your clothes!"

"Don't baby brother me woman - ten minutes does not count!"

"Fine" she said it in that voice that entirely implied it was _not, _taking her dress off in the most unceremonious way he had ever seen and thrusting it at him –

"Wear the dress."

"I will _not"_

_"_If you were a man you'd wear the dress."

"That does not - did you hear that? Do you need some help sister?"

"No" she grinned sweetly, unashamedly naked – "I'm naked. But it looks like you might."

She wrestled him out of his clothes in the end, but they never got round to swapping that night. He remembered waking up with his head aching and Cersei slapping him gently and repeatedly in the face –

"Jaime!"

Someone was doing it now –

"Jaime!"

Jaime opened his eyes unwillingly, on the sun coming down through the leaves, the sound of a picnic being packed away and Brienne slapping him not too gently in the face –

"By all the gods Lannister stop having your sex dreams around the children!"

"Sex dreams? Whaa – I was not – that is I –"

Brienne swore at him benignly and disbelievingly. He finally focussed on her, waking up and smiling. It seemed as though her eyes were always the first beautiful thing he saw every time he woke up. It was so strange, on the back of such a dream to wake up to such a reality, not bad just –

"What?" he supposed he must have been looking at her oddly.

"You're – so – different" he managed slowly.

"Well I should bloody well hope so!" she rolled her eyes at him in despair – "Come on! We're headed back to Winterfell."

He wondered, quietly, all the way back, how different his life might have been. He wondered at what a day like this would have been like if Cersei had been here with them. It would never have happened he supposed, somehow he could not see it, could not see her here in this life. He remembered that night in his dream and so many other of those childish occasions when she had pissed him off and he had chased her screaming that he would kill her. That stung a bit now as he supposed, not for the first time, that indirectly he _had_ killed her and wondered why he had never felt worse about it. She was so close to his heart it was easy to forget that she was dead. But then, at the same time, the girl he held in there had been gone for a long time. _Oh my love _he thought, but it was an unformed thought with nowhere to go. He had, he supposed died with her after all. He was not who he had been when he had been The Kingslayer and it was – it was wonderful. He knew in his heart that Cersei could never have saved him from who he used to be. It had been so long before he ever began to imagine it would be Brienne.

He watched her in the sunlight riding ahead of him. He wondered if he would ever tell her she had been his redeemer and his salvation. He loved her for it and wondered if he would ever tell her that either. He probably would not, it was horrifyingly sentimental. There were moments, brief seconds, when he felt guilty for his infidelity towards Cersei, there was a time it would have seemed impossible and yes it hurt his heart a little to think of those times. But it only took a few moments consideration for it to stop feeling wrong and it was, essentially because she was _so _different. And he was different and this was right, this world that did not have Cersei in it. He missed her like he missed his hand, another phantom limb that he could learn – had learnt – to live without.

This was alright, this world and this person he had married. It was not the same as the passion of childhood, it was not desire, it was not madness. But it was love, and that was alright.

_x_

**So this came into my head watching "Crimson Peak" where he's all like "You're so different" and she's like "From what?" and he basically means his sister but just says "Everything". I got giggles thinking if Jaime gave Brienne the "You're so different" she'd be onto him straight away and just be like "Yeah from your fucking sister, I ****_know!" _****Weirdly when I ship a couple, like I do Jaime and Brienne I almost never ship either one of the couple with anyone else, these guys are the one exception because I DO ship Jaime/ Cersei, but I totally think he will be the valonquer and will outlive her so in this instance I'd argue both ships still work! Happy to debate though as always! :-)**

**And yeah, I know it's been forever – I have far too many fandoms – I haven't quit on "Nature of the Beast" either, it's just on a temporary hiatus, sorry. **


End file.
